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.

Thing #13 - Del.icio.us

Spent some time this afteroon exploring the del.icio.us world of website tagging. I searched the most recently and most popularly tagged websites about all sorts of things. The tricky part is knowing just how vast the database of search terms or tags must be since everyone tags their chosen websites independent of everyone else. Two word possibilities could be two separate tags or they could be one tag (i.e. montgomery+county vs. montgomerycounty). Incidentally, the most popular site tagged with montgomerycounty is our very own Montgomery County Public Libraries. We were beaten out in montgomery tags by a youtube video about a Flea Market Montgomery but we win again if you count the 34 people (as of today) who also tagged our webcat (ibistro) page. One could probably search for hours here. I also checked out the tag libraries and I have a connection to the most popular hit there too - the IPL (Internet Public Library), formerly housed at my alma mater, the University of Michigan. I answered virtual reference questions there while in grad school. Ah, the good old days!

Thing #12 - Rollyo

Today I tried to explore the search engine creation site rollyo.com. Unfortunately, rollyo.com seems to be too popular for its own good. Several times I got a "Too many connections" message while trying to explore the site. I did look at just a few of the searches created by rollyo users but not enough to comment on yet. I tried creating my own but again got that dreaded "Too many users" message. If rollyo.com really wants to be a player in Web 2.0, it will have to find a way to fix its bandwith issues. I will continue to explore the site and update this blog as necessary.

Thing 11 - Library Thing

Today, I explored the world of Library Thing. I thought I had initally started a Library Thing library many moons ago, but I was able to find it. Although, someone was using the username I wanted (LibrarianChris). I wonder if it's me? Anyway, you can visit my Library Thing library at http://www.librarything.com/catalog/LibrarianChristopher. I've just started to get my feet wet, so there are only a view books listed and no tagging as of yet. Searching for these books was harder than I thought. You would think finding a American copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix would be easy using Amazon as the search database, but alas it took me several pages of results to find something close. I searched LC and Maryland Interlibrary Consortium too with no luck. Very odd!

Thing 10: Online Image Generators

I was ahead of the game on this one, having created an avatar for our Staff Development Day back in October. Visit http://www.meez.com/ to create your own. :) Yes, some of the physical attributes, clothing, and accessories require coins, but many, including everything about my meez, are free.

Thing #9: Explore MERLIN and Library-Related Newsfeeds

It looks I've my first thing that needs updating. Part of this thing's exercise was to check out several blog/rss feed search engines. Well, Feedster, what 23 Things bills as one of the largest rss feed collections out there, is apparently no longer in existence. (Google strikes again!) It sounds like Google's blog search and Bloglines did it in about 2 years ago.

I checked out Topix and it freaked me out just a tad. As soon as I got to the Topix homepage and was greeted with a list of the latest postings related to Silver Spring, MD (where I live). I could understand that if I was at home in Silver Spring since it could figure out my location through the computer's IP address, however, I am at my work computer in Bethesda. Shouldn't it have listed Bethesda-related postings instead? Ooh-wee-ooh! Searching in Topix is a bit different from other sites since it searches individual postings instead of feed titles. If I searched with Bloglines, I am searching by feed title. Topix even maps out (via who else? Google Maps) where the postings were from. Eerie indeed!