Thing #18: Online Productivity Tools

Today I checked out Zoho Writer and Google Docs. I had forgotten that Google Docs started out as a different product until I read the Thing #18 page and listened to the audio feed. I have more familiarity with Google Docs as my ALSC Committee used it for past year or two to share and edit files. I know there are lots of bells and whistles in Google Docs that I haven't learned about yet. I still don't understand why it has to open up a new window everytime I open a document. It's confusing because I never know if I'm logged out or not since my "Signed In" info. appears in both windows. I just saw that GD has lots of cool templates to use in document creation from planners to calendars to resumes to budgets. ALA unveiled its new networking software early last year and it allows us to share documents but we can't them like we can in Google Docs. At MCPL, we occasionally offer GD as an option to customers who need to save their files. Our public PCs have moved beyond the floppy disk age and many customers still don't have flash drives so they are left with few options for file saving. Of course, you have to create your file in Google Docs to save it, rather than using Word, Excel, etc. but you'll still be able to open it from another computer or with Word, etc. later on if you want. How cool! My new laptop only has a sample version of Office 7 on, so maybe I will consider Google Docs and the like as cheap options to buy the full Office package. (If I can only find a table at the local coffee hotspot to logon..... lol)

Thing #17: Blinkx Exploration (Replacement for Sandbox Wiki)

Well, I finally hit a pothole on the information superhighway. (Does anyone still call it that anymore?) Thing #17 called for us to join the Maryland Libraries 2.0 Sandbox Wiki, but I couldn't figure out how to join. I saw nothing on the sign-in page telling me how to join if I wasn't a member. Maybe they automatically signed up the original participants? Anyway....

In its place, I visit a list of 43 Things by Stephen Abrams of SirsiDynix and chose to do a little exploration of blinkx.com which allows users to search a conglomeration of online video sites like Youtube (more on that in my posting for Thing #20). You can search by keyword or by clicking on one of a list of 20 categories, including TV shows, music, fashion, kids, for teens, home and living, etc. You can also browse by channel. (I haven't yet discovered what the difference is between a channel and a category though. There seems to be some overlap between them. One neat feature is the ability to see your search results in a video wall. The downside is that there's isn't much detail that way telling what each video is about. You can also see a video wall of selected categories right on the main page. The music and tv show sections are curious in that I have a feeling many aren't legimately online. I know AOL Television, YouTube, and imdb.com do offer some titles with permission of music labels, artists, and TV production cos. but I'm not sure if Blinkx links to any of these. Many of its links certainly fall outside of these realms. I know this has been a long term problem for the Web that is still being worked out.

Thing #16: Wikis

Other than Wikipedia, I'm not very big on wikis. My old ALSC committee tried creating one as a means of sharing information about how children's librarians were using technology to serve their customers and in their programming efforts. Unfortunately, it stuggled to really catch on. We even tried advertising it with little photo cards when we went to ALA conferences and meetings. Part of the problem may have to do with the platform used. We used a very basic platform and that made things like comment pages hard to find. I'm not sure our audience really knew what to make of wikis or how to use them either. They may have thought it was just a webpage and didn't recognize that they could participate in creating it and thus make it dynamic. SJCPL's wiki of subject guides was impressive, but I'm not sure it makes the best use of the wiki format. Since only library staff are involved in creating it, it might as well be a static webpage. There was a page for customer comments, but only one person has so far found the discussion tab where one can post such comments. There were also only sporadic comments on the discussion tabs of the various subject guides. Other 2.0 technologies may already be eclipsing the wiki. The Book Lovers Wiki that the 23 Things page linked to was not updated after 2006 because the library system who created it upgraded its public catalog to allow review to be attached to its records. This was something that was touched on in my previous posting on Library 2.0.

Thing #15: Library 2.0

Today's "Thing" dealt with reading about Library 2.0 and various perspectives of it. See http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/002/1.htm. It's been almost 4 years now since this article and its follow-up perspectives were written. That said, it's uncertain whether the statements within still hold true or not. I am of the thought that most do, though not all of our 2.0 technologies have taken off as originally thought. (Does anyone still visit Second Life frequently?) However, I'm not sure taking the opportunities to make the best of use of these technologies and build on them for the future. Unfortunately, the economy has had a lot to do with that. Many library systems, including mine, can't afford to be too cutting edge at the moment.

One idea that caught my eye in the discussions I read was the seemingly simple idea of linking one library (system)'s catalog to others to create worldwide catalog access. Santa Monica (CA) Public Library did this with their catalog (which is iBistro based like ours) via OCLC WorldCat. Montgomery County could make such use of this with so many other library systems in the area. We do have a page that contains links other systems' catalogs, but one much search in each individually. However, we are soon losing our subscription to OCLC WorldCat so such an advance with have to wait. (It's an imperfect technology right now anyway, because the results from other libraries are listed by distance from your ZIP code. MCPL is listed with a Gaithersburg ZIP code since that's where are collection management office is. Hence PGMLS actually shows up first in my search list even though MCPL's Silver Spring branch might have a copy of what I'm looking for.)

Other libraries have taken other steps toward making their catalogs more user centric and Amazon.com-like. There are places on their catalog page for the public to tag and cloud and leave user comments about a given title. It seems like many of us still have a ways to go before we are taking advantage of all Library 2.0 has to offer. Will we get their before Library 3.0 beckons?

Thing #14: Technorati and Tagging

Today, I explored Technorati a little. It was difficult because the site had been changed quite a bit since the 23 Things page first linked to it. Several of links no longer worked and redirected me to the main page. I could only figure out how to search blogs and posts, not tags. However, the was a listing of the most common tags. The list of the Top 100 blogs was not very surprising. Among the top 10 were a few the frequently mentioned by the mainstream media, including the Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com) and tmz.com.