Thing 35. Books 2.0

People around these parts seem to be reading books as much as ever. Our request lists are healthy; people read about books, hear about books and wait in breathless anticipation for the next book in whatever series they've come to love. I think reading for pleasure and for information is still the way to go for most people.

Some have come to love their Kindle or the equivalent, but I wouldn't say that they love them so much that books are doomed. These people seem to love them for vacation or travel. If I were a student and were able to get all my textbooks digitally, I would do it in a heartbeat. It seems, however, people still love the package of a book. It's like a receiving a present when you get it.

Web 2.0, in my opinion, is vastly useful for finding books and reviews. I love it for getting a good idea, based on a list of preferences, for what books I might like. Librarything and goodreads, for example, gives me a list of people who have read the same books as I have. I can then go to their pages and find out what is on their list that I haven't read, and chances are that I will like their choice, or at least be compelled by what they have chosen. I love the ease of being able to find booklists for almost anything and locating books that I have forgotten the title to, but remember the plot. The internet and Web 2.0 are awesome for this sort of thing. If anything, I think having these resources spurs people to read more books than they may have otherwise.

Thing 34. Is this Our Competition? Online Answer Sites

You know, I don't necessarily think that these sites are our competition. In many ways, these sites are answering questions that people never get up the nerve to come to the desk to ask us anyway. I've given this some thought long before this "Thing": the reference desk is somewhat flawed in that most people don't approach it unless they absolutely have to.

Two aspects are at play: time and risk. The internet gives people a "what the hell" card: they can have a fleeting musing and immediately get a generalized answer, and choose which generalized answer they think works for them, with no face-to-face interaction. People are risking something when they ask any question, and also placing themselves in an unpredictable situation. Any human interaction is fraught with some emotional connection, and I think people avoid this with strangers as much as possible, especially if they feel they can get what they need elsewhere. Sure, there are those who have approached the desk and had a perfectly satisfactory experience and would not hesitate to do it again. I would be willing to bet, however, that most of the people using the online Q&A sites are people who have rarely, if ever, used the library. Never mind come within a stones throw of the reference desk.

I'll admit, I'm one of the first to Google for an answer because, frankly, it usually serves me well. There's a big difference between finding out a general idea and doing a research paper on something. Even with things such as law or finances I feel I at least get an overview of an issue so that I can ask (more) educated questions about the issue. I guess, too, I think the Q&A sites are fairly okay for really pragmatic things like handyman things or household issues, but I've never once had an answer come anywhere near satisfactory on those sites. I've never actually asked a question directly, but the archives give me an idea of the caliber of the answers. I guess I would try to go to an expert website first.

The library would be a perfect place to get answers to many of the questions thrown up on these sites, but for one problem: you have to go to the library OR you have to get up off your fat ass and punch in your library card number to access databases (I guess that's two problems). Libraries are not available for drunken, 3AM stream of consciousness questions, libraries can't provide quick "good enough" answers in between work projects at someones desk and library websites are not the entire internet.

I think libraries are for different things than what the Q&A sites provide. And that's just fine.

Thing 33. Travel 2.0

Sure, I think travel sites are good for the library. I mean, as a supplement to the excellent travel guides that we have. I just don't find the user recommendations all that innovative or surprising (yet). It's that rule of the masses: more opinions don't mean more quality opinions. Unless someone is going to NYC, or London, or Hong Kong, there are not enough users at any one site to generate quality content. I want my content edited and vetted. Just like the selection process at the library or at my favorite radio station or even the grocery store: at some point I want to be able to rely on a trusted expert to tell me stuff, or show me stuff, or direct me to listen to stuff. I do use TripAdvisor because it has the most content, but I don't know that it is particularly wonderful. I mean, when people are rating chain hotels, it's hard to know what their standards are. Cause mine tend to be vastly different.
I thought some of the travel blogs were fun. Notes from the Road is truly one of the best looking blogs I have ever seen. The photos are lush and beautiful, and I like the tone of the writing. One of the sites that isn't included that I think is very useful is locally-created, but world encompassing VegGuide, for the vegetarian traveler. I'm not vegetarian, but I like to have the option, and I think it seems like a pretty good little resource. And what about wikitravel?

Thing 32. Google Maps and Mashups

View Come Visit My Roseville in a larger map
Uh, I created a map using the Google maps that takes you on a purely cursory tour of the neighborhood by the temporary location of the Roseville library. I did it because I had to, so don't judge. It seems fairly easy to do, but I honestly don't know how often I'd necessarily use this. I'm sure a lot of brides out there would love this and I think it could be really great for all sorts of specific purposes, I just can't think of any off the top of my head. Two really cool mashups are WalkJogRun, which enables you to track a route in your neighborhood or access the routes of others, and Panedia, where you click on a marker on the map and it shows you truly beautiful panoramas of the scene around you. Panepedia seems based in Australia, however, so there are few entries other than Australian ones. I cannot wait until it gets filled out, though I bet if I searched Flickr I could find some pretty good stuff.

Thing 31. More: Twitter

To say that I'm sick of Twitter would be an understatement. I felt like I said all I had to say in the last Twitter post. But, because I am trying to be flexible and open minded and young-seeming, I sucked it up and tried some other things that the More Things on a Stick Wiki (haha "stickwiki") told me I should try. Thing is, I have all the same feelings as before: it's a great marketing tool, possibly a great networking tool (if anyone you want following you actually has a Twitter account), and a fun phenomenon if you have time. Otherwise, I'm completely bored with it. I don't want to check it, even my (few) friends who are on it have nothing of interest to say, and I'm sick of hearing about it.
I added a gadget to my homepage so that my Twitter updates are all there, I practiced texting on my phone before deciding that I really, really did NOT want to have to come up with pithy status updates and tinyurls, and I messed around with the Tweeter Directory only to become more and more irate about the fact that I'm being forced to explore this platform ad infinitum. No my page does not reflect me as a person and no, there is not enough information there for people to get a sense of who I am as a person because I AM NOT OUT TO MARKET MYSELF. I am out to finish this endless "Thing," this monkey (or twit-like birdie) on my back. In that grudging spirit, I will answer the rest of the questions:
I am using Twitter to see if anything interesting comes of it. I've had an account for about a year now, 7 people I know have an account and a whopping 2 of them update with any regularity. I also subscribe to three businesses, two of which I'm told sometimes feature special Twitter-only coupons and one which I just want to know when their events occur. I tried subscribing to a local, interesting guy and a library specialty account, but they posted so much about so many trivial things that I quickly unsubscribed out of sheer uninterest.
As you've guessed I'm at "#2 Presence" in the 5 Stages of Twitter Acceptance and as far as adding to the list of what I think Twitter is... perhaps a graphic representation would suffice:

Any questions? Thanks for the image limeduck!

Thing 30 More Ways to Use RSS and Delicious

There is no reason for anyone to use the internet and not use an RSS reader. It is hands down one of the most useful tools out there and I adore it. I, of course, use Google Reader. In fact I started using it before I really understood what it was, but the prompts were so simple that I was able to figure it out and realize the awesome power of it fairly quickly. One of my favorite blogs, 20x200, is part blog, part art gallery and part store. Each week, this bricks and mortar gallery in New York introduces two new prints, one photograph and one graphic, and you can buy these limited editions for as cheap as $20!!! Jen Bekman, who runs the gallery, is cool, completely immersed in the latest art and came up with the idea of making the latest art available to the masses. If I did not have RSS, I would forget-JUST PLAIN FORGET- to check and see what goodies are waiting for me. Seriously, it's like having a little present that you've customized for yourself waiting for you. And you don't have to fill up your email inbox.
With that said, some of the feeds are a pain. I've subscribed to a couple of different news feeds and the amount of material has just been overwhelming. For instance, I started subscribing to the (new) White House blog when Obama became president. It was SO cool to get a play-by-play of what was going on every day. One of the problems, though, was frequently the feed would send me the entire blog: all the entries from the beginning, even after I had read them all. Now this was clearly a problem with the platform itself, but I unsubscribed because of it. Others, like the Star Tribune politics blog, inundated me with too many things. Same with The Morning News, an really great online magazine. Every year in March, The Morning News does a "Tournament of Books," pitting the latest, hippest books against each other according to the very subjective reviewers. It's funny and fun and I would like to subcribe to just that, but when I subscribe I get EVERYTHING that The Morning News posts, which is like a magazine's worth of reading PER DAY.
Now, I've heard the opinion of some that you should just subcribe to as many things as interest you and don't worry if you don't get to it all, but I just cannot do it. I have hand-picked these 28 subscriptions and I want to read it all. I don't like feeling unfinished. It's weird the relationship that I have with my subscriptions: I've unsubscribed if a blogger is too depressing, or makes too many of the wrong choices, or blogs about stupid things once too often. The choice of these feeds is so personal, it's like creating your own library.
Delicious, on the other hand, has not been as reveletory for me. I went through a spate of using it for all web pages that interested me, but, like my former files of articles that I would rip out of magazines, I rarely, if ever, accessed them again. I definitely like knowing it is there, and probably someday I'll have a use for it, but for now I just don't need it.

Thing 29. Google Tools

As it's plain to see, I use Google. I've already used both Google Alerts and I am a Gmail user. What to say? Google Alerts couldn't be any easier and Gmail, well, it's fantastic and I guess I wouldn't use anything else. Check out the coolest Gmail theme ever: Ninja!
I think Google Alerts could be used especially to stay in touch with what is happening in the community, or to find out what is being said about a specific library. It seems like a useful tool, but my problem is usually the amount of crap that gets dumped in my email. I suppose I should have a separate gmail account for this sort of thing. It is something I've been thinking about for a while.

Thing 28. Customized Home Page

Didn't we already do this one? In Online Productivity? Thing ? Anyway, I use Google as my home page and I now have Pandagirl as my theme. I use Google because most anything I use is from Google including my email, rss reader, blog platform, and I've always kind of liked their search engine (maybe you've used it?). It's just been so easy for me to customize my stuff through Google that I haven't felt the need to do anything else. This exercise helped me realize that it was unnecessary to switch and that one of the best things about going with a very popular platform was that the chances for updates and support are pretty good.
On my page I have my Gmail, Google Reader, local weather, BBC, top national news and quote of the day. I know I have the option for multiple "folders," so I could have more than one customized home page tabbed on this page. I've tried that, but found that it was just too much. I like how incredibly easy it is to change things on this page and I like how my email and rss are right there, because those are the things that I really care about. I toyed with the idea of adding some sort of twitter or facebook notification gadget, but then realized that email notification for this sort of thing is fine with me, someone who barely dabbles.

Twitter addendum

I actually get some time at my other job to read magazines that are, uh, not really held in high esteem. I came across an "article" about Twitter and how celebrities use it to comment on all sorts of things and people can follow these tweets without having to be a "friend" like you would have to be on Facebook. It occurs to me that Twitter, and possibly the reason I don't really like Twitter, is perfect for marketing a personality. Even if that personality is not a person. One day, and I don't think it will be that far in the future, there will be enough people on Twitter to make it a worthwhile marketing platform. And then, not too long after that, everyone will stop following anyone or thing on Twitter because it will be like carrying around a bunch of annoying advertisements trying to sell you on something.

Thing 27. Twitter

My Twitter username is bananahaynes. I would have posted a widget, but then I'd have to change my settings to "public" and frankly, I don't want to. I have enough relationships online and off, thank you very much. I finally signed on for Facebook and I have a very love/hate relationship with that. Twitter, to me, is like Facebook with only the status updates. I've stopped actively pursuing anymore "friends" because I can't handle the time or mind clutter. And for me to be a part of a constantly updating social network will drive me effing nuts!

I actually signed up for Twitter quite a while ago because I wanted to see if I could understand it. I do, now, but for it to actually work for the things I'm interested in, such as friends' lives, they too would have to sign up. And I think I know three people who actually use it, and one who has ever updated. I then signed up for a feed suggested by More Things On a Stick and one of a local fellow who has a great personality and seems to really, really like twittering. Problem is, I just don't care. I have more than enough useful and non-useful information running through this brain of mine to be bogged down with minutiae. I fully agree with David Lee King who says basically that if you are into it, use it, but otherwise it's fine to just know about it. Like many of these Things, I am very thankful to be aware of the technologies. Twitter is the sort of thing that libraries could use, but not unless there is someone on staff who would be able to do it all the time and not until a good portion of their patrons are following the feed. This may be something that will take off in the future, but for now I think it's a bit over-hyped.

Thing 26. Join the 23 Things On a Stick Ning

I've been putting off writing about the Ning, mostly because I don't really see it as being that great. I mean, if all the information about 23 Things came off of that page, maybe it would be a place that I would visit often. As it stands, there just isn't anything there unique or useful or entertaining enough for me to want or need to visit it that often, if at all. I joined in the second round and I commented and I read some stuff, but this is just another thing for me to have to check and keep track of, and that takes away from my productivity.
With that said, I guess I could see making one for some sort of community page or something. It's the sort of thing that isn't really useful until it is, I guess. Profound, huh? I do notice that with the advent of More Things that there is more activity on the Ning, making it more interesting, so maybe I'll continue following it through the entirety of More Things and comment on it at the end.

Just an Observation about RSS feeds and Design

I read most of the blogs that I follow straight off of my Google home page where I have a RSS reader installed. Most of the entries come up full-text and I never even see the web page that the text is from. Of course, I check my blog posts to make sure that they look okay from the reader, but AFTER ALL THAT WORK to update and add to my page none of it is even represented on the reader. If I was trying to sell something or get people involved in something and the page was part of that theme, I would really want to try to remember adjust my settings so that people would have to go to my page to read the entire entry.
Now, I'll admit, I find it super annoying when I am required to do that, but at the same time, for favored pages, I grudgingly do. I guess the best answer to all of this is to make sure that the content is just as strong as the aesthetic and the bells and whistles.

Thing 25: Bloggers Toolkit

Oh geez. I spent what seemed like ten hours looking at widgets, trying them out, making them work, and making them fit my page. I spent WAY too much time looking at things that were broken, useless, or ridiculous. I ended up adding a favicon, a search bar, a subscription feed, a widget that turns my posts into a podcast, and a widget that pops-up mini-screens over the links on my page.

I ended up rejecting many widgets mostly because they came with advertising attached. I guess that's the downside of free widgets; I despise ads because they make the page so cluttered. In fact, I'm not sure how long I'll keep Odiogo, the podcast widget, and Snap Shots, the pop-up box widget, because both of them add a visual element to the page that I don't like. The podcasts themselves are hilarious, though. They're all wooden and mis-pronounced in a charming, robot kind of way.

The really great widgets were the ones that could be added with one click. My favicon was a little more complicated and even now seems to only work intermittently. Also, during the customization part I had no idea what to put in for number of pixels that I wanted the widget sized at. Mostly, I'm pleased with what I found, and I'm still thinking that Lil Wayne widget would have looked SO good...

New Newbery Medal! And an R. I. P.

Congratulations Neil Gaiman! I haven't read The Graveyard Book, but it's always nice when someone who lives (kind of) locally wins an award. I've only read Coraline and American Gods by Gaiman. I thought American Gods was really pretty amazing, but I had major trouble with Coraline: it was so terribly unsettling. It figures that it is now a Major Motion Picture, one that I probably will not see.

On another note, John Updike just died of lung cancer. It's like the passing of a national treasure. Dude wrote SIXTY-ONE books! I didn't always like his stuff, but he sure knew what he was doing. And, despite the fact that it was pretty fluffy, I did like The Witches of Eastwick, so there.

Thing 24: Refresh Your Blog

I did, a little bit. Refresh my blog, that is. The thing is, I liked it a lot before and I don't think many of the changes I did are that interesting. I did, however, learn that if you want to use a template for Blogger that is XTML, then you must unzip it first. Granted, I have very little idea what that means, but I still got a new template only to get rid of it because I didn't really like it that much. I'm going to be looking around to see what I can find and maybe change this one of these days.

Anyhow, on to commenting about blogging itself. I have blogged twice since I finished the first round of 23 Things and frankly, I just will not be blogging unless it is for something like this. I love reading blogs, but I don't love blogging. I read tons of them and comment when I'm moved to. I find new blogs all the time and follow them on my feed, deleting and adding as I see fit. Really, I love blogs.