Peer pressure strikes again

Jennifer W Hanson's Dewey Decimal Section:

901 Philosophy & theory

Jennifer W Hanson = 054496583814954 = 054+496+583+814+954 = 2901


Class:
900 History & Geography


Contains:
Travel, biographies, ancient history, and histories of continents.



What it says about you:
You're connected to your past and value the things that have happened to you. You've had some conflicted times in your life, but they've brought you to where you are today and you don't ignore it.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

A tourist in Second Life

I know that as soon as you have an account in Second Life, you're a Resident, but as far as I'm concerned, The Residents are a bizarre conceptual rock band. So I'm still a tourist in SL, and will be until I change my avatar to look like an eyeball in formal attire.

The screen shot that illustrates this post is of my avatar, Isobel Jinx, posing in front of Vermeer's Girl with the Pearl Earring and wearing a free t-shirt she picked up at the genetic genealogy section of Info Island's genealogy presence. How like a tourist (though I have to say that none of the free t-shirts I've picked up in Real Life fit like that^). It was pretty ironic that one of the first buildings I would stumble into in SL would be the genealogy center (yes, I am heavily into genealogy but grad school cuts into my research time).

After reading the tweets of my classmates who got to SL before I did, I was worried about basic concerns like learning to walk and so forth, but the initial signup and avatar creation process went pretty well for me (though it was very odd to see people falling out of the sky at Help Island). I didn't have much trouble figuring out how to move around, and in short order had teleported to Info Island. I spent a lot of my time wandering around the December holidays exhibit and the Peace Park, devoted to various religions. It seemed like a tranquil place, plus it had singing birds, so there I was birding in SL (four species on my SL list so far, plus a couple more unidentified; none actually seen). I liked the Buddhist shrine and meditation space; it seemed so cool. It wasn't until I was driving home from RU and its high-speed connection that night that I realized the wonderfully exotic opportunity to meditate in SL was really a mundane mental discipline I've done in Real Life off and on over the years (mostly off, because meditation isn't exotic at all, really).

So far in SL, when I see another Resident, I run the other way. As a result, I haven't had any of the "Naked Life" experiences some of my classmates have had (whew). I guess it's possible to be shy in a virtual world, too. The look of the world reminds me a lot of the game Myst; otherworldly yet a little too tidy, at the same time. The SL version of Old Queens campus WAS pretty neat though.

I discovered that you can do SL on dial-up (yes, it's wrong, but still possible). I'm very intrigued by the various organizations that have staked out a presence there, plus the option of having an avatar that can try out things you might not want to (yet) in Real Life. Sort of a test universe, as it were. I will probably keep playing around with it in the future. On the other hand, as someone who often prefers dealing with information rather than people, I hope that this is not going to be the new model of surfing the web. I would rather just find the data I want, rather than having to go through some avatar to do the same thing. But perhaps others would feel differently.

Feedback for Steve

I have to say that I've really enjoyed this class. I came in with lots of experience on some social software (blogging, Flickr) and none on others (pod- and vodcasting). There wasn't a week I didn't learn something new, even about services I was used to using. Working on all of these things over the course of the semester also showed how they interact with each other. I'm not an expert on everything, by any means, but I think I know enough about what we covered to help me keep up in the future. I've become a convert to Delicious, and look forward to playing around more with podcasting, vodcasting, and Second Life (among others). This class has also given me a greater appreciation for the various strengths and weaknesses of these applications when they are compared with each other.

There was a lot of homework, but I found that the structure was extremely helpful in terms of keeping up with the work. I didn't spend as much time as I would have liked checking out the library examples, but other than that, I think I got pretty much everything done (so far, that is; one blog post and the final project yet to complete after this). Holding this class as an online one is the right choice (and this on-campus commuter found it a relief to not have to drive to New Brunswick and back twice a week for a change).

The readings were good and often thought-provoking. Johnson, in particular, has really challenged my thinking on a number of fronts; I love that in a book. In the future, you might want to include a reading from Clay Shirky's terrific Here Comes Everybody. I know not everybody in class went for Brown and Duguid, but I enjoyed that book when I first read it on my own, and I think their point about what happens when human nature and technological hype collide with each other is very important to remember.

I'll conclude with what may (or may not be) an ironic note; I ended up "hanging out with" with my classmates in this virtual class more often than I did in my on-campus class this semester. I'm a shy person who often has troubles putting myself forward in person, but interacting with others online is often easier for me. I think being online with my classmates (whether working on a project, trying to troubleshoot a problem, or just chatting) was another really positive part of the class.

In a nutshell, thanks! :)

Johnson reading part 2

I thought I was goofing off with a couple of friends on Friday, but I ended up with a pile of evidence in favor of Johnson's Sleeper Curve. I'll spare you the back story, since it will never be available on DVD, but suffice it to say that we found ourselves (after pizza for dinner) at an apartment chockablock with tapes, DVDs, and techno gadgets. We, in this case, equals me and two friends, all OCD (more or less), geeky, and...oh, never mind. Like I said, the back story isn't available on DVD (and you should be grateful it isn't, but I'm starting to wonder what the ratings would be if it were). Two guys, one girl, all birders, all addicted to snappy wordplay, all with issues, two into Flickr and sf, the other one a self-described "online Luddite"...I guess it's like Seinfeld with binoculars and Flickr.

We watched a few episodes of The Middleman and Land of the Lost. The Middleman is based on a comic series and came out last year (I think, I'm not the greatest scholar of tv series) and Land of the Lost was the classic version from the 70s (which I watched when a kid, but that's another story).

The Middleman has a silly faux science fiction premise, but a gaggle of interesting characters, smart dialogue delivered at warp speed, and so many pop culture references that the creator's blog has entries listing all of said references for each episode. Plus, since the dialogue happens so fast, I wanted to watch each episode again just to get it the first time (but what I got, I liked a lot).

Land of the Lost had dinosaurs (you can't go wrong with dinosaurs), no outside references, illogical plots (despite the writership of such sf luminaries as Larry Niven and David Gerrold, in at least one case) (not that The Middleman's plots are that much more coherent), 70s hair and fashion (ok, that's probably unfair), bad special effects...

The Middleman makes you work for your satisfaction so much that when an episode is done, you immediately want to watch it again. Any reference you catch the first time around is all the sweeter (hey, the female protagonist and a neighbor swap song lyrics with each other instead of conversing). Meanwhile, what you see is what you get with Land of the Lost; since you're not distracted by anything else, you can home right in on the plot holes and bad special effects.

So, the question I'm supposed to be answering is what all this means for the library and/or educational worlds. Johnson provides more evidence for the directed learning discussed by Brown and Duguid (you can learn extremely complicated things if you're motivated to do so to fill a perceived need). He also makes a case that you can learn almost without trying, if you're viewing media that encourages you to learn how to keep up with it. Certainly, the fact that libraries now are getting into gaming and stocking DVDs of movies and tv series would seem to be a step in the right direction. After watching a couple of episodes of The Middleman, I could almost see a festival showing DVDs of the series; library staff could hand out scorecards to the audience so they could play along at catching the references. You could even call it the Pop Culture Literacy Festival or something. Ok, maybe not. But that was the kind of fun I was having with my friends on Friday night, and it was quite a bit of fun.

But there are still all those books on the library shelves and as Johnson notes, "Networked text has its own intellectual riches, of course: riffs, annotations, conversations--they all flourish in that ecosystem, and they all can be dazzlingly intelligent. But they nonetheless possess a different kind of intelligence from the intelligence delivered by reading a sustained argument for two hundred pages" (Johnson, p. 186). My question is how libraries can unpackage the intellectual riches in the books on their shelves for those who have grown up in a networked world. The knowledge encoded in our books is every bit as challenging as any game; one could argue that it just suffers from a non-networked delivery mechanism.

I would suggest that it all comes down to ensuring that learning and intellectual challenge are fun, fun like a game you play with your friends. New media seem to be better at capturing that balance than "old media" at the moment, but old media shouldn't be jettisoned. We need to find ways to show that intensive attention to a prolonged logical argument, or looking through an author's eyes for 300 pages, can be as fun as playing World of Warcraft, just fun in a different way.

Gaming research

If I had to choose a gaming console setup for a standard public library, I'd start by asking the library patrons about the kinds of games they enjoy playing or are interested in. I'd make an effort to reach a wide spectrum of users. I'd also look at what similar libraries are doing with their gaming programs; it would be helpful to find other libraries with gaming programs in my local area, because we might be able to work out some kind of consortium-type arrangement (or at least be likely to be dealing with some similar situations). It would also be very useful to hear about others' experience with gaming in other libraries.

I'd also research on gaming review sites and tech sites like CNET in order to find out more general types of information such as what games are available on console gaming setups and whether there are any usability quirks; the sorts of things that wouldn't be library-specific but would be good to know.

Personally, I would be inclined to go with Wii because it gives physical exercise along with the mental challenge of gaming. It also seems to appeal to a wide range of demographic groups.

Screencasting best practices

I'm not going to claim I have anything like the gospel in terms of screencasting best practices, since I'm still trying to figure it out myself. I've only used Jing, which is not always reliable (you get what you pay for?), so I would first say, know your software and its quirks. Comparing more than one screencasting application might not be a bad thing.

Know what you're going to say ahead of time. You don't need to have a script, but do know what you need to convey, so that if you're talking without a script you can still get your message across without a lot of dithering. Beyond this, have an idea of the ideal flow for your screencast in your head. Know how what you're saying in the moment fits not only into that moment but into the larger picture.

Know your window sizes for recording and don't move your mouse around too much or too fast.

Be relaxed and don't get stage fright. You don't have to be perfect, a conversational tone is enough. Your voice is probably also enough. You may not like how it sounds but as far as everyone around you is concerned, that's how you sound, so get used to it.

Tetris screencast

Inspired by some of my classmates, I did a screencast about playing Tetris in Facebook and trying to beat a friend's score (which, ultimately, I didn't do).

One thing I've learned from Gaming Week 1 (and this exercise):

I'm not a social gamer in online media (yet), though I am more social in other online and offline contexts. Maybe it's because I'm an only child and ended up playing board games, computer games and D&D solo (trust me, it is possible to play D&D alone). The real social aspect of gaming for me had to wait till I got to college and started playing arcade games in the student center with the other reprobates who were (and still are) my friends. They got me into playing card games like hearts (and our favorite house variation, double-cancellation hearts). So social gaming, for me, is still something that usually happens offline.

But as an old arcade hand, if Facebook can bring back the fun of trying to beat your best friend's score, maybe it's not such a bad thing. Now they just need to bring back Star Wars, Joust and Tempest (among others)!

Re: Tetris. I was a total Tetris addict for a while until the aches in my hands told me I needed to give it up. Tetris Friends shows me that not only do I still have the chops, ready to be reawakened at any moment, I can also whine about how this version of Tetris is dumbed-down from the bare-bones version I used to play.

Johnson reading

Since I disagree with George Will about most things other than baseball, I'm not really surprised to be disagreeing with his comment about the sophisticated delivery of stupidity. What does surprise me is how impressed I was with the argument made by Johnson's Everything Bad Is Good for You.

I don't consider myself a "real" gamer, but on the other hand, I've always enjoyed games. Board games, card games, D&D, computer games...when I think back on my life, I realize that I've spent a lot of it (probably too much) doing things like that. In other words, Johnson's contention that playing games sharpens the mind seems reasonable. Heck, I can even see a fast change in the learning curve as I've played new games this week and quickly improved my technique and reaction speed.

The part of the Johnson reading I enjoyed most was his discussion of tv. Now, I'm a tv snob. Sure, I've watched my share of junk tv over the years, but these days when I do watch it, it tends to be PBS. I was blown away by the persuasiveness of Johnson's argument that tv has gotten more mentally challenging, complete with very effective examples. That he topped it off by linking the appeal of reality shows back to game-playing (and his excellent discussion of emotional intelligence) was the final slam dunk. I won't think about tv in the same way again (whether or not I watch any more of it^). (It also helps that a good friend of mine is an avid game-player and fan of 24 and Survivor as well, and he even used a similar argument in trying to explain Survivor's appeal to me.)

So, consider me convinced of Johnson's argument, and add one more topic of disagreement with George Will to my lengthy list of them. :)

Ning

Ning is an interesting service. I could see this being useful in a work environment (or any environment) where you need to create your own customized network. Facebook and MySpace have a lot of apps and features that are not really necessary for "serious" networking or collaboration (and could even distract from it). Ning allows a group to focus on things that are important to it, not on an outside site's standard interface.

I think all these services raise the issue of the security of data and information that's stored somewhere outside of an organization, however.

boyd readings

After reading the danah boyd readings assigned for class, I found the blog post most thought-provoking. In terms of libraries, I think one possible message to take away is the following:

Facebook is widely seen as being a more "respectable" site, and therefore would probably be the site a library would gravitate to in order to set up a social networking presence (all other things being equal). However, boyd's description of the teens who tend to use MySpace is a list of those who are socially-ostracized for one reason or another. Those teens may not have much support in their everyday environment; meanwhile, libraries have a mandate to serve all, especially the underserved. Arguably, the teens who need libraries the most are on MySpace rather than Facebook. In any case, since both are such popular sites, it's impossible to ignore one in favor of the other.

It's also a matter of knowing what the local community uses. If a library is in an area with a large Latino population, and Latinos have a strong presence on MySpace, then that library needs to be on MySpace. A library that hosts musical events might want to be on MySpace for the huge musical community to be found there. In any case, these decisions about where and how to set up a library presence in cyberspace need to be based on something more than hype and misunderstandings, and the work of boyd and her colleagues provides a good lens through which to view these trends.

Facebook screencast

Getting this week's screencast homework done was more problematic than it was last week. Jing seems to like to quit at inopportune times. My screencast is about becoming a fan of a radio show (or tv show, or website, or what-have-you) in Facebook. You can find it here.

Sticky?

The question is why social networking sites are "sticky," encouraging people to spend lots of time on them. I have to say that I've been on Facebook in my "real online life" (well, one of them) for close to a year and although I've fooled around with it some, I haven't spent much time on it. In other words, it hasn't been "sticky" for me.

However, some of my offline friends (longtime friends dating back to my college years a long time ago) have started migrating to Facebook in the last couple of months. I think I might've been the first one on Facebook, then another one joined and now she's been successful in getting several more to join. And, guess what? Now I'm spending more time on Facebook (other than homework for this class). I'm not really interested in the goofy little games and such, but now that people I know and care about (and some of whom never check their e-mail^) are pitching their tents there, I'm more interested. So, for me, I'd have to say what makes a site like Facebook sticky is the opportunity to be in touch with my friends (which dovetails nicely with the article by boyd and Ellison).

Although it isn't a social networking site in the sense of Facebook or MySpace, Flickr is the site I find stickiest. Number one, it's networking around something other than myself (namely photos). I'm a shy person, and it's always been easier for me to bond around shared interests rather than throwing the spotlight on myself.

Number two, more of my offline friends found Flickr sooner; some have very active lives on Flickr and absolutely no interest in Facebook.

Number three, it's a less-threatening way of meeting new people. I also prefer Flickr's language of "contacts" over Facebook's "friends;" to me, the title "friend" is not something I hand out lightly. Another thing I prefer about Flickr is that relationships can be asymmetrical; friending on Facebook seems like such a commitment.

Number four, there are oodles of things to do on Flickr in terms of discovering what pools to add your photos to (ok, so my spice rack isn't alphabetized, but I used to reshelve my books for fun) ("Hey, let's do them in chronological order this time!"^); games you can play (I'm not big on Facebook's games but Flickr's Free Association pool is loads of fun); refining your tagging protocols (yes, I really do this!); geotagging your photos; seeing what your contacts have posted; looking for photos of specific subjects...the list goes on. I don't know if Flickr counts as a social networking site for the purposes of this week's classwork, but to me it's way stickier than Facebook.

If my friends continue to gravitate to Facebook, I'll probably find it to be sticky for the opportunity to stay in touch with them. But Flickr offers me the opportunity to stay in touch with my photographically-inclined friends and also offers me lots of geeky little toys and activities into the bargain. What's not to love? :)

Oh, and here's Germany Schaefer

[Germany Schaefer, Washington AL (baseball)] (LOC)
Originally uploaded by The Library of Congress

Schaefer would be called a flake today. He played for the Washington Senators ("First in war, first in peace and last in the American League."). Here he is clowning around with a camera. The photo comes from the Library of Congress and is part of Flickr's The Commons project.

How to add a note in Flickr

This screencast finally ended up being about how to add a note to a Flickr photo. You can find it here.

I like Jing's original-styled interface, but the downside of that is that things aren't where you expect them to be. I think that helped lead to the loss of an absolutely brilliant screencast I did about how to post to a blog from within Flickr; I somehow managed to not save it. :( This was after several false starts on the topic, mostly because I was hit with unexpected twists in the process. It was so annoying; I picked out a great photo of Germany Schaefer...ah, enough of my whining.

I can see how screencasting would be a great tool to create presentations, but there's definitely a learning curve!

SCILS598f08 on YouTube

It's been great fun looking at everybody's videos. Here are some of my favorites:

Gabrielle's vid is priceless! A great tweaking of the librarian stereotype, and the little bounces in the cardigan photos are perfect.

Tara's recipe video was very well done; the music builds, the photos build, all the while you're waiting to find out what the recipe is or waiting for instructions. Finally, you get the punch line at the end. Great job!

I also loved Jen G's How to clean your house in a minute or less. Great flow and cinema verite look; sans the helping hands, that's basically how I clean my condo.

Steve's Aramaic lesson was short, sweet, and to a Star Wars fan, hysterical.

Finally I have to give Renee's second episode of Dr. Hannah thumbs up, because it irresistibly reminded of a friend of mine who really needs to find his own happy place. ;)

All in all, it was great to see the range of topics and approaches everyone used in their vids.

Education vs. entertainment

I think the idea of education vs. entertainment is a bit of a misnomer. Educational videos can be very entertaining in their own right, and the more entertaining they are, the more likely they are to get their message across. I suppose you could make the argument that it's wrong to hold good educational content to the standard of being entertaining: just because a presenter doesn't speak well or know how to make a flashy video doesn't mean that person has no worthwhile knowledge.

The Pew internet report found that educational videos were more or less equally popular across all age groups and both genders, so that suggests a steady demand for such videos. Entertainment videos may fluctuate in popularity, especially those that are related to some trend, but people are always looking for information on how to do things. This steady demand suggests that though educational videos may not be at the top of the ratings, they will have an ongoing demand and sustained popularity.

"Educational" video

I figured I'd do a video about how to chop an onion, but it's impossible to film oneself in the act of chopping. Therefore, this is not as clear as a "how to" video really should be. The narration is also not the most focused in the world. I guess it demonstrates the basic idea of the vid assignment, though.



You can also find this vid on blip.tv here.

"Entertainment" video

This was meant to be an educational video, but once I threw some dynamic music behind it (which I kind of have cold feet about), it became way more entertaining (at least to me). Photos of moths, with music more suited to a thriller. It plays much better on my hard drive than on YouTube, at least, to me.



You can also see this on YouTube here.

Flickring the class

Looking at the photos in the scils598 and scils598f08-edexperience pools reveals some striking commonalities. I think just about everybody had book-related photos, mostly books in a large quantity. Transportation and technology were also popular; I link these because in this case, on-campus students drive or take mass transit, while online students use their computers to "travel to" class (in other words, photos of the RU campus itself were actually somewhat scarce, given that everyone in class is a Rutgers student). Family and/or pets were also popular, an indication of the social networks that keep us going. Food got lots of attention, whether it was a cup of tea during a study session, the vending machines at SCILS that are forced to substitute for real meals, a home cupboard, or takeout menus.

However, there was evidence of some differences (perhaps more evidence as one looks through everybody's own photo stream as opposed to the groups). Pursuits such as skiing, wandering the NJ pine barrens, mushroom collecting, and kayaking were all represented (though, now that I think of it, these are all "outdoorsy" activities). There was also some evidence of travel, as well as a tendency to stay home in comfort.

All in all, it seems like a group of students with more in common than not.

Telling a story

My story is a classic tale of the road not taken, featuring a relatively innocent American in the cosmopolitan city of Helsinki.

Jen H's story

Podcasting vs. blogging

A few thoughts about podcasting vs. blogging as an information source...

Podcasting's huge plus is the sound of the human voice. Text, particularly text on the internet, is subject to misinterpretation because of the absence of the inflections found in the human voice. Any topic where personality is as important or more important than content (perhaps a "Meet Our Librarians" feature), or even when a dry subject may be given more life by an enthusiastic speaker (scientists in the business of popularizing science know this well), could benefit from podcasts.

Subjects where specific facts are important and need to be retained may do better with text, however. A text-based blog post allows the reader to take in the information at his/her own pace, rather than trying to keep up with a speaker's pace by jotting notes and almost inevitably missing information. Searching within text-based blog posts is much better developed than search within audio files, as well, which is another factor in favor of text as a way of expressing information that needs to be remembered.

Another question (no answers here, alas)

Rather than doing another "librarians and The Long Tail" kind of post, I decided to look at it from a somewhat different perspective. I decided to wonder about "authority."

My dad once said to me, when we were talking about opera, "If you're not obsessed, you're not paying attention." Or words to that effect. Opera is a niche that leaves many people cold, but many other people are totally enthused about it and, yes, obsessive about their interest (when I say obsessive here, I mean eagerly seeking out new information about an interest, not stalker-type bad behavior or OCD compulsiveness).

Having such a wonderful role model (and I do mean that sincerely), I grew up to be an obsessive about my own array of passionate interests (some of which I share with dad, others not so much). He introduced to the joy of stores filled with obscure and intriguing possibilities, mostly in the literary and musical realms. He also introduced me to the idea that if you were interested in something, it was always worth digging deeper and learning as much as possible about it. You didn't need a degree or a formal program of study: you just needed to go out and learn.

When the web came along, it was a godsend to obsessives of this model. It became relatively easy to set up a webpage or, later, blog about your very own passionate interests. Better yet, you could find others who cared as much as you. No matter how fringe your interest, your community was just waiting to find you (and each other) on the web.

So, how does a librarian deal with this?

When I was researching genealogists for a project in Human Information Behavior last semester, I came across a number of comments that could be reduced to the title of a paper in Oregon Library Association Quarterly by Anne Billeter, Ph.D., "Why Don't Librarians Like Genealogists?" Genealogists are very demanding library users, and for a librarian with no particular genealogical expertise, dealing with them can be daunting at best.

The social software trend puts more authority and power in the hands of users. For librarians who are seeking to create the next generation of libraries, this can be a mixed blessing. In a nutshell, is there a place in libraries of the future for the passionate amateur, and if so, where? Would there ever be a library where an obscure musical query got sent to the local musical maven with no library degree, rather than sent to a reference desk librarian?

I got to wondering about this after a historic house tour, when I asked a question of the guide, got an answer and then went home and researched it further. It turned out the guide's answer wasn't completely accurate. On one hand, erroneous information was being given out. On the other hand, it was an obscure topic. Is there a way to bring the amateur knowledge of the obsessive together with the professional knowledge of the librarian? Should there be?

It seems to me that both librarians and passionate amateurs/obsessives care about accurate knowledge on a wide range of topics. It would seem that there should be a way to bring them together, but given the fraught history of professional-amateur relations in many fields, that may not be possible. Still, librarians engaged in creating systems that give their users more of a voice in the library community may want to consider these concerns.

Librarians and the long tail

The most obvious place for librarians and libraries in the long tail would seem to be as New Tastemakers. Tastemaking, after all, has always been a big part of the job. However, librarians have typically done this from a position of authority relative to the patron (if an advanced degree isn't a marker of authority, I don't know what is). New Tastemakers don't generally have the benefit of a degree: they tend to be hobbyists and enthusiasts who has studied a subject in depth for the love of it. For librarians to succeed in this new world, they will have to lean less on the assumption that they know more by virtue of their training and education. Instead, they will have to play up their own specialized interests (but let's face it, librarians tend to be people with interesting hobbies!).

Being New Producers seems straightforward enough. With the technological tools now available, it's easy for libraries and librarians to put up blogs, wikis, podcasts, Flickr streams...the whole nine yards. With the push toward open source software, libraries can even roll their own OPACs and other computer infrastructure without being limited to expensive proprietary software.

In terms of New Markets, I think one has to think of library systems as a large group, not as individual institutions. Inter-library loan is already a way in which this happens. What may ultimately happen is that libraries may build their collections as part of a whole that is held by a consortium. This could be a good way to build a more complete collection in a way that uses limited funds more effectively. Of course, some books will need more copies because they're more popular, but this might be an effective way of stocking a larger number of books with a smaller demand.

SCILS experience

It's hard to condense my SCILS experience to a single blog post, since it has changed pretty much every aspect of my life. I'm a part-time on-campus student who is doing the program in three years, not the standard two years for a full-time student. Last year, all of my classes were night classes, which were relatively easy to fit in with a full-time job. This semester, I have one afternoon class and this online one, so I have to make up the hours I miss because of school. I'm lucky that I have a workplace where this is possible.

However, the combination of working full-time and taking two classes with plenty of homework means that I have very little time to spare for other things. Housework is at the bottom of the pile (literally), and I see very little of my friends (apart from the odd e-mail exchange). The constant round of trying to keep life organized enough to deal with all the things that need to be done can get very wearing.

One of my regrets about the program is that I can't take advantage of lots of things that are offered, such as special lectures. As a career-changer, I have to keep the job I have now in order to pay the bills, so I can't always be running off to lectures (no matter how intriguing) during work hours. I do have a paper from last semester's Human Information Behavior class that has the potential for publication, but finding the time even for revising that has been impossible so far (even though I know such a publication would be a huge plus for my resume). I spend a lot of my time being pulled in many directions at once, and that's also wearing.

Then there's the travel. I do a lot more driving than I used to, and the roads I travel have their share of, um, interesting drivers (never mind potholes). I have taken the train on occasion, but that requires a lot of logistical planning (I have to take the NJ Transit bus to and from the train station since parking is essentially unavailable at Princeton Junction). I would take public transit more often if it fit my temporal and geographical circumstances better. For the record, my one-way drive is about 45 minutes, so having an online class this semester is a terrific break.

The good stuff: I've done really well in my classes and enjoy the subjects I've studied (even Human Information Behavior and cataloging!). I've been out of school for a long time, and since I've returned to grad school, I've reminded myself that I really enjoy intellectual studies and challenge. The structure of a class is also kind of reassuring for someone whose life has been nothing short of chaotic for way too long. It's also great to meet others who are equally excited about the field. I think it's a very interesting time to be in the library field because of the opportunities offered by new technologies. These trends are everywhere, but I think LIS folks get to deal with them more consciously than a lot of other people.

I've also enjoyed seeing everybody else's images of their SCILS experience!

Google Analytics stats

When I first started blogging back in 2004 (when you had to walk uphill both ways to school in the snow^), I resisted installing site stats because I just knew I would get totally obsessed with them and waste too much time. So now here I am doing it for credit (and after I've succumbed to their lure in other departments of my online life). C'est la vie.

Almost three-quarters of visitors to this blog used Firefox (74.72%), while 25.58% used Internet Explorer. The connection speed results seemed surprising at first glance: a whopping 44.19% for dialup (woo hoo!), then 23.26% for T1 connections, then 18.60% for cable, 11.63% for DSL, and 2.33% (one whole visit) for "unknown" (though given how much else Google Analytics can determine, one wonders how something could possibly be unknown).

The initally surprising results for dialup, however, are quickly explained by the fact that I haven't gotten my new DSL to work yet (mostly because of lack of time to devote to the problem), so I am still on dialup except when using the network at Rutgers while on campus. The T1 stat suggests someone is looking at this blog at work (though that isn't me, I figure that Flickring on my lunch hour is way too much as it is).

For comparison (well, ok, just because I wanted to, but it offers a comparison), I also installed Google Analytics on my birding blog, and the top speed there is cable (36.36%), with DSL second (27.97%). IE is the big fave of folks looking at the bird blog (53.15%), with Firefox (28.67%), and Safari (18.18%) runners-up. Most of that blog's vistors find it through search engines, while most visitors to this blog use the russl wiki.

pbwiki vs. wikispaces

For my wiki comparison, I decided to try wikispaces. Its setup was very quick and painless, faster than pbwiki. Once in, I noticed Google AdSense ads on the side (though to be fair, pbwiki also has ads; I just haven't seen them since my pbwiki experiences have been with wikis for education (without ads).

Wikispaces' editing interface seemed more limited than pbwiki's, although it might just be because I'm used to the pbwiki interface. I tried embedding a VoiceThread, but wasn't able to do it; that might be because I couldn't decide whether it qualified as video, audio or other media.

One different feature in wikispaces is the appearance of a field for notes on a revision when one is in editing mode. These notes can be added to the history log and are a nice feature.

Once again, I feel as though I need to dig deeper into wikispaces in order to ferret out more distinctions between it and pbwiki. The more you play with these services, the more quirks you find, and the more you refine your understanding of them.

Shared docs and students

In some ways, shared documents such as Google Docs can be a boon to students, whether online or offline. Although students who don't meet face to face in the classroom at all need to rely on such collaborative services, students who need to work on projects in an on-campus class can also find these services useful. Just because on-campus students attend class in a physical classroom doesn't mean that they are in class all the time! There's also likely to be a mix of students who live on campus and students who commute (and therefore spend much less time on campus).

However, everybody has certain preferences for communications media and working with others. Collaboration via shared docs may be easy or second nature to some, while others will have a hard time getting used to it. Working asynchronously on a document after a clear workflow is agreed upon may favor those who like to work independently. Working on a document all at once may favor those who prefer conversation and hashing things out together (and its online version, IM).

In sum, I think that whether a collaborative document is an asset to a group of students (whether online or on-campus) depends as much on the individual personalities and working styles as anything else.

del.icio.us introductions?

Using del.icio.us bookmarks as a way for people to introduce themselves is an interesting idea. Pros are:

• it's simple
• it's fun and not-too-serious
• it's a painless way of introducing Web 2.0 and tagging
• people don't have to agonize over what to say in response to the question, "Tell me a little about yourself."
• the lighter side of people's personalities comes out (hobbies) and many people prefer talking about those things than work or career

The one negative I've come up with is that human beings love stories, and there's no narrative in a set of del.icio.us bookmarks (unless the viewer constructs a hypothetical one) like there is in a statement about "who I am." Whether a story is more memorable than a quirky bookmark choice, however, is probably debatable.

So, I think my decision would be to give it a try in appropriate situations.

Libraries and the long tail

I think the idea of the long tail has a lot to offer libraries, but I also think not all libraries will benefit from it. The libraries that will get the most out of it are likely to be special and academic libraries. These libraries need deep collections in topics that may be esoteric; even topics that are relatively mainstream get more obscure the deeper you dig. These libraries also serve patrons who need more than just the usual information, and are frequently extremely knowledgeable (and demanding) about specialized subjects and sources.

Archives also have the potential to benefit from the long tail, though many archival materials are so unique that they are beyond the scope of the long tail. If an archive has collections that provide context to the archive’s unique materials, however, the long tail may come into play. Since archival reference sources may be even more specialized than those found in special libraries, this is an obvious long tail situation.

A standard public library may not need the long tail, however. A public library needs to have a wide range of resources to cover a wide variety of needs, but may not have the need (or resources) to specialize. In a way, inter-library loan may be the best way for public libraries to use the long tail: if a patron needs more specialized information than what the public library can offer from its own holdings, inter-library loan is the next obvious path to take.

del.icio.us vs. ma.gnolia

One of the confusing parts about today's internet landscape is the plethora of different sites doing the same things; there isn't just one social bookmarking service, there are many. So many different platforms leads to fragmentation, to the point that it sometimes seems like a wonder that anybody can find each other on the net at all.

Which brings us to the topic of this post. ma.gnolia is a social bookmarking site like del.icio.us, but with its own unique features as well. One thing that struck me (apart from ma.gnolia's interface, which is simple but more esthetically pleasing than del.icio.us' interface) was the prominence that ma.gnolia gives to groups. Groups (or pools) are a big part of Flickr's interface, but del.icio.us doesn't highlight this aspect at all (unless I just haven't found it yet, which is possible).

Another thing that struck me was that when I created a bookmark, it automatically was given a Creative Commons license. Although I think a lot about copyright and rights management, it never occurred to me that a bookmark might be a unit of information with a license, like a book or photo. Creative Commons is an interesting alternative to standard copyright (which seems to be getting more intrusive and draconian by the hour), but I haven't yet used it for any of my online content (I've been considering it for some of my Flickr photos). In other words, it was a bit of a shock not only to have a license attached to "my" bookmark, but a CC one at that. On the other hand, none of the content in that bookmark, nor the bookmarking technology itself, is mine; the only thing that's mine is my choice of it as significant. Since ma.gnolia is a social bookmarking site, bookmarks are meant to be shared, so a share-alike CC license is an appropriate choice.

Education

One thing that strikes me about Brown and Duguid's discussions of learning in The Social Life of Information is that their model is very different from much that the US educational system has to offer. B&D emphasize that learning is an on-demand activity, and that "learning about" is different from "learning to be". In effect, the context of learning is what allows learning to happen, not the process of transmitting information itself.

Although there are many programs that no longer take this approach, the typical model for school learning in the US is that of a teacher lecturing to a room of students. It's hard to imagine a process that is less hands-on and participatory. If there's a need here, the need is "I need to pass this exam to get a good grade." No wonder students don't retain information past the end of the class! School is a separate universe from the rest of life, while Brown and Duguid argue that it needs to be an organic part of an individual's life.

In practice, this may be a difficult model to achieve. The current US school system has universal standards and benchmarks. Brown and Duguid envision something much more decentralized and able to adapt to the situations of unique individuals. Rather than one standardized process, there needs to be many different processes to suit different professions/occupations/fields of study, not to mention the different temperaments and backgrounds that students bring with them.

I'm reminded of the video we watched at the beginning of this class, "A Vision of Students Today." Those students were saying things that fit very neatly with what B&D are saying in their book.

Digg vs. del.icio.us

After messing around with del.icio.us for a while (and quickly liking it very much), I set up an account on Digg. I've seen plenty of references to Digg online, but had never tried it.

I was surprised to quickly get a bad case of what could best be called culture shock! Advertising is prominent on Digg, whereas it's nonexistent on del.icio.us. As a result, the whole feel of the sites is very different. Digg's site seemed loud and busy, with Flash animation in the ads. del.icio.us is much more minimalist. Navigation on Digg seemed more difficult too.

I also found Digg's language intimidating. You "submit" a link, and the process isn't nearly as intuitive as del.icio.us makes it (of course, you don't have to install an add-on to your browser, either, which could be a plus). Then of course, there is the voting process of "digging" a link (or not). On del.icio.us, you can see how many other people have bookmarked a link, but Digg's more active language makes the process seem more competitive or game-like. That could be a draw to some people (obviously, given Digg's success, it is a big draw for lots of people) but it just turned me off.

All in all, I found Digg to be overly commercial, busy and competitive. I think I really haven't given it a fair trial, and if I came across it at another time (during a week that was less personally stressful), I might have liked it more; I certainly can be quite competitive on occasion, and playing random games on the internet can be lots of fun. I'm interested to see if anyone else tried Digg, and if they had different opinions than I did.

SlideShare

I'd glancingly run into SlideShare a few times, but I decided it was new enough to me to qualify as a "new-to-me" 2.0 type site, so I went and looked at it some more. I knew that it was a place for people to post their Powerpoints, but that was all I knew about it.

Looking at SlideShare more deeply revealed features I hadn't expected, such as thematic groups in which you can put your presentations (here's New Yorker). You can look for events such as conferences, or browse by tags, or stick with the tried-and-true hits posted on SlideShare's home page. People may lament PowerPoint (and particularly bad PowerPoint), but there's no shortage of folks looking to share their presentations on SlideShare.

SlideShare even has toys like karaoke, which allows you to search on a tag and then watch an assortment of presentations (all with Creative Commons licenses). I'm not sure what this has to do with standing up and warbling along with ABBA's greatest hits, but if SlideShare calls it karaoke, it must be. As a Flickr addict, I have to admit that both the topic groups and the "toys" remind me of Flickr (never mind the tags, but everybody has tags these days, it seems).

So, SlideShare looks a bit like Flickr for PowerPoints. Say what you like about these presentations, they're omnipresent in some places (academia comes to mind) and it's not so bad to have a place where presentations are as accessible as photos on Flickr, or videos on YouTube.

More Feed thoughts

Finished Feed and I have to confess I was hoping for (but not expecting) a happy ending. The bit at the end where Titus was also wanting a happy heart-warming ending reminded me of the way the dystopian sf movie Brazil was recut for tv release, with a ridicuously fake happy ending slapped on, totally against the filmmaker's wishes.

I think in terms of technology, we're a ways away from the world of the book. It'll be a while before a jaunt to the moon is as routine as a jaunt to a casino. In terms of social attitudes, though, I think we're pretty much there. The obsession with celebrities, being cool, consuming the right products, demand for instant (and often superficial) information, corporations positioning themselves as being agents of good...it's all here already. Although it's more an undertone in the book (the geopolitical threats of war from other countries), the narcissistic society of feed consumers also allows them to shut out that unpleasant reality in a way that seems rather familiar.

The ultimate paradox I'm left with (and one that doesn't figure in the book so much) is how the ultimate customization of what one consumes (in terms of information and other products) leads to a society that is so conformist. It's as if even the nonconformists are looking for some way to fit in.

RSS and information overload: cure or cause?

I have to admit I have mixed feelings about this topic. I follow a bunch of feeds in Google Reader, and when I consider that the average number of unread items on login lately tends to be running between 700 and 800, it seems like it would be a perfect example of information overload. But I find that it's actually a good way of skimming content. Depending on my whim, I can scan all my feeds at once, or I can pick out a particular one ("Ok, there are way too many unread lolcats. Time to prune."^) Sometimes I give up entirely on a very active blog such as Boing Boing, mark all read, and start from scratch (it helps that Boing Boing links back to its past posts on recurring themes). I am still learning the best way to keep up with my subscriptions, which include news, webcomics, birding blogs, foodie boards, lifehackers, tropical storm updates and environmental news, to name but a few. Plus, with Google Reader, it's all on the web and not cluttering up my e-mail in-box(es) (which is/are mostly out of control).

And that's why I like RSS. I wouldn't argue it serves all of my information needs, but it serves some very specialized areas very well. I get to combine those specialized interests into one "newspaper" customized for my unique tastes (most of my interests are so esoteric that no mainstream publication could ever break even trying to hit my demographic). Sometimes I get general hard news through my RSS feeds, but usually I prefer NPR for that (plus I subscribe to Newsweek). A specialized blog like WorldChanging, however, covers the environment in a much more detailed way than most other sources out there (probably why their blog graduated to being a book as well as a blog).

For some reason, RSS doesn't trigger my "overload" circuits in the same way that too much e-mail or the thought of subscribing to an actual physical newspaper does. I don't know why that is, but that seems to be the case for me.

Pageflakes

Pageflakes is sort of a "roll-your-own" portal service. When I first visited the page in Firefox (my "school" browser), it presented a bunch of widgets customized for Philadelphia: weather, news, sports, the usual. When I tried to change my location to Princeton, it presented me with an error, so I shrugged and surfed off elsewhere.

When I came back to Pageflakes later, though, it brought up results for Princeton after all. I should note that ALL of this was done without even having to register; no doubt Pageflakes uses cookies for this sort of thing.

The wigdets (or "flakes") cover a range of different news sources (old media and new)...newspapers, CNN, Digg, ESPN and CBS Sports for sports, among others. There's weather, local news headlines, movie and tv listings. If you click on the menu button at the top right of the screen, it pulls up a list of more widgets you can add; the "Fun" category includes MySpace, Facebook, horoscopes and "Hot or Not?" There are also non-internet content widgets of the sort I find as part of my Mac OS X operating system like world clock. You can create a blog or check e-mail, or import your Del.icio.us bookmarks. Adding a "flake" is very simple, though the "x-out" option in the window (if you want to delete it) is very tiny. You can find all the flakes here.

Again, I was able to play around with modifying Pageflakes (adding and deleting widgets) without registering for the service. The obvious sorts of content that you would find on a portal page (like your ISP's page, or iGoogle, or Yahoo!) are available, but if you dig deeper into the choices, you can find pagecasts on dog shows, condo issues, "African Diaspora fashion" and even the Legaspi family's photo album. These pagecasts look to be a feature that can be created by registered Pageflakes users. In this sense, Pageflakes is like other web organizations like Facebook that have opened up their platform to outside developers.

This is an interesting service, and I can see that it might be very handy for a library to create a low- or no-cost portal that could be highly customized to its needs.

Bloglines vs. Google Reader

I have to admit I've been using Google Reader for most of my RSS needs since spring or so. Before that, I used a Safari client that put feeds in my bookmarks, but that gave me more bookmarks than I wanted. I've found Google Reader to be very simple and intuitive to use, though there are sometimes multiple feeds to choose from. Occasionally I'll start it up and nothing will come up, too; I've never figured out the source of that problem but it goes away eventually.

I know that Bloglines is a popular reader, so I was happy to try it out. In practice, I think I may have drunk the Google Kool-Aid though, because the little differences between the two interfaces just annoy me (things aren't where I'm used to them being). The list of feeds is on the left side, just as in GR, but the main window displays a Bloglines blurb unless I've selected a feed. In GR, that window has a list of some recently-posted items from various feeds (complete with the first few lines so I can browse and decide if I want to read the whole thing) if I haven't selected a feed.

Some have said the Bloglines sign-up process is more cumbersome than GR, but if you don't have a Google account, I think it's about the same. The e-mail verification process is a pretty standard way of setting up an account these days and it didn't bother me any. Having three feeds to choose from in Bloglines is kind of startling, but sometimes GR will also list multiple feeds for one blog or news source.

In sum, I think the two services are fairly similar, but I'm used to Google Reader, so I'll stick with it. I might think about putting a Bloglines chicklet on my blogs, though.

Feed thoughts

So far I'm finding Feed to be an interesting and often funny book (I'm a little over halfway through it). Although it seems like a fanciful vision of the future, at least some of it concerns processes that are already well under way.

• portability of data - more and more things are possible by using PDAs, phones and iPods, and more and more services have web-based interfaces (not hard drive-based ones) but what's more portable than being plugged directly into the network via your brain?
• customizing of one's computer experience - websites are falling over themselves to offer recommendations and browsing experiences tailored to the web surfer. The netizen can also customize his or her own experience by selecting what RSS feeds to read (say), rather than just taking a network news broadcast as it is. Titus himself is customized by his parents before his birth, perhaps the logical conclusion to the current research obsession of linking genes to specific traits and propensities.
  
• privacy issues - following on from the point above, websites can offer customized experiences by collecting data about their users, both overtly and covertly. The initial incident where Titus and his friends are literally rebooted in order to stop the hacker is perhaps the logical extreme of this process.

Some other real-life situations, such as consumer culture, the ever-extending reach of marketing and the desire of people to a) be cool and b) be able to turn to another source for support are not technological, but are fostered by the technologies around us and the ones in the book. I'd say that Feed is a good example of the "if this goes on..." school of science fiction. As someone who likes social software, but likes even more to be away from the computer with the cellphone off, I would consider this not the kind of future I would want to live in, even without the portents that Something Evil Is Afoot Behind the Scenes.

On a more frivolous note, I have to complain about an ornithological oversight in the book. The larger point of the passage I'm whining about is that birds such as hawks in cities were a symptom of the loss of their habitat elsewhere (it might actually be a symptom of hawk populations doing well enough that they can colonize previously unused habitats, but this would be a long digression calling for more research than I feel like doing right now!).

My main kvetch is with the line, "There were streets in the cities, and eagles flew over them, wobbling without moving their wings." If a large raptor-type bird flies that way, it's really a Turkey Vulture. Eagles don't wobble, in fact, their flight is about as steady as a jet airliner. These respective differences in flight style can allow a birder to make an identification from a considerable distance.

Of course, if I REALLY wanted to over-analyze this passage, I could say that it's presented as sort of an oral history (on the feed, no doubt), so maybe the "geezer" in question just wasn't good at bird identification. :)

UMD Library Learning 2.0

Learning 2.0 seems to be a trend or a project being used by a number of institutions. While surfing the web, I found the Learning 2.0 page at the University of Minnesota. It has a lot of good posts about using Web 2.0 tools. The interface is clean and attractive, and the blogging voice is friendly and supportive (also with a touch of humor: see the post about Getting Things Done).

Another thing that reinforces this particular blog's impact is that the University of Minnesota has a site linking to all blogs throughout the institution. Just search on "library" on this page, and find a whole range of library blogs within the university! I do wish there was a better way to browse all these blogs than just alphabetically (like a subject categorization). Still, by linking these blogs into a multi-blog "collection", the university can leverage its information and make it easier for someone to find information. It's a way of centralizing the inherently de-centralized information universe of the blog.

Blogger vs. WordPress

I've been on Blogger since late 2004; I have a birding blog under my own name and a food blog under a pseudonym there. I have no previous experience with WordPress, apart from reading other blogs created with it and thinking, "My, that looks spiffy!" The version of WordPress I'm using for this exercise is the free hosted version, because I'm a poor grad student with a mortgage to boot (at least it's not an adjustable-rate mortgage!).

• The "Categories" option was always one of the things I envied non-Blogger blogging programs like WordPress. Blogger has added tags since I was a newbie blogger, but it is still really nice to set up some general categories to sort your posts (rather than having to remember to stick to consistent nomenclature yourself). Since blogs publish in reverse chronological order, indexing blog posts has always been an issue.
• WordPress has more and cooler (ok, maybe "more literary-looking" is a better phrase) templates.
• WordPress also gives you a different window when you want to preview a post before publishing. Since it is really easy to lose a post unintentionally in Blogger when toggling between preview and editing views in the same window, WordPress' solution is a very nice touch.
• When I added a photo to a post from my hard drive, I was impressed with the extra layout options (not available in Blogger, other than simple alignment of the image). However, once I had uploaded the photo and wanted to add text to the post, I couldn't; when I clicked around in the posting window, nothing took. I had to switch to HTML view (rather than "Visual" view) to create a post. But when I went back and edited the post, I was able to insert the extra text fine. This may be my problem rather than WordPress' problem.
  

Hmm. As I'm typing this, I see that Blogger's spellcheck flags the couldn part of couldn't as a typo.

• Back to the bulleted list. Another nice feature from WordPress is a button to insert a "more" line and break up a post. This way you can easily put in just the beginning of your post, then have your reader follow along "below the jump." This is a good way of displaying more posts on your main blog page (or keeping dicey content a little more hidden, or just building suspense). On the other hand, it demands an extra click from your reader (bloggers argue about this post structure a lot).
• I tried inserting photos from my Flickr account, but that started getting too complicated, so I gave up. Flickr photos usually work better if you're in Flickr and use the "Blog This" button anyway.

All in all, WordPress has lots of nice extra options to play with (possibly too many). The next time I feel impelled to start a new blog, I might give it a whirl.

Oh, yeah, and the WordPress testy blog is here.

Home Alone

Disclaimer: I read The Social Life of Technology earlier this year. I found it to be a well-argued, thought-provoking book.

Home Alone is filled with perceptions about computer use in society, to the point that it's impossible to distill every valuable insight into one short blog post. Still, two overall themes jump out at me.

The first is that when technology collides with human nature, human nature always wins. It doesn't matter how cool, elegant, functional or worthy the technology is; if it doesn't fit into what people want and are willing to do, it will fail. Brown and Duguid's example of hot-desking at Chiat/Day is filled with examples of how workers found this innovation to be hostile to their working process, and how they fought back. (This section also demonstrates how stubborn and resourceful people can be when their accustomed way of doing things is disrupted by something that they have defined as "no good reason".)

The lesson libraries should take from this is that any successful technology initiative is rooted at its core in a deep understanding of the group(s) that will be using it. As Brown and Duguid say about Alexander Graham Bell's process of "socializing" the telephone, "Though the telephone was a transformative technology, Bell nonetheless worked with the social context of his day, not against it." Libraries should know their patrons and community well before they attempt to implement a new technology (even one that has been successful at other libraries), or they risk wasting time and resources (or, at worst, alienating their public).

The other point that I take from this reading is that it can be hard to perceive computer technology accurately. On one hand, there is hype about anything new and shiny (in the book, hot-desking, but it's pervasive when one considers Web 2.0). On the other hand, the home computer is such a ubiquitous and mundane presence that the "home office" would seem to be a simple thing to create. This idea assumes that the individual and his/her computer are enough, while totally ignoring the business infrastructure (both technological and social) that supports a worker sitting at a computer in a corporation. (I'm currently experiencing this firsthand as I slowly work through self-installing DSL at home!) This combined exoticism/mundaneity just complicates the task of those who are designing computer systems, especially if they are not IT professionals themselves (say, librarians trying to design a system that will work for their patrons). The socialization of the computer is a slow and bumpy process, and one that is far from complete.