me at mah job

I lied.  This is my last Learn & Play post.  Those Rainbow Brite accessories normally live at my desk but they decided to make an appearance in the video.

Now you know what I do all day.

thing #23: this is the end

This is my last Learn & Play post, my last thing.  I can’t believe it!  It seems like it went by much too quickly.  I am so happy for the process, because it has brought me out of the depths of blurkerdom and into the heights of participation.  For me, it was the perfect amount of accountability.  Not to mention the virtual camaraderie that this journey has cooked up at CML — thanks to Twitter, etc. I now know my colleagues better.  Like the first Care Bears movie, it’s kind of adorable.

Now, the challenge is to keep it up: to maintain my professional presence on the interwebs. (Should “professional” and “interwebs” be used in the same sentence?).  Can I do that?  Egotistically assuming I have been already, can I be terribly witty and impressive in the long haul?  Only time will tell….

thing #22: MOLDI…er, Digital Media!

More so than the name (believe it or not!), MOLDI’s non-compatibility with iPods & iTunes has always bugged me.  As a Mac girl through and through, hypocritically typing this on my work desktop PC, I am so happy to say that MOLDI will now play nicely with iPods!  Yesssss!  I am so happy to now be able to sell it to customer’s without embarrassingly saying, “There’s a catch….”  I look forward to watching this collection grow and grow in depth, breadth, and usage.

However, besides occasionally watching a DVD on my laptop while traveling or blasting my iTunes while cleaning the house, I am not the biggest fan of digital media.  Again, I am a major un-plugger.  You won’t find a cell phone or iPod on my person. (Isn’t “my person” one of the goofiest phrases ever?)  I prefer tangible books, especially for fiction titles — physical items with weight & scent, whose pages beg to be turned, whose only requirement for use is a brain and a source of light.  I wonder how long it will be before I eat these words?  The time when I no longer check out physical books at all but instead download them to one device or another.  Will I be able to say my life is better for the change or is it just an inevitable/neutral change?

P.S.: Don’t you just hate it when you find a rotten one in your crate of clementines?

thing #21: podcasts

I am not super into podcasts.  Perhaps it’s because I try to be un-plugged as much as possible?  (Remember, I don’t even have a cell phone).  My husband, on the other hand, lives by podcasts.  They help get him through his long commute.

Almost exclusively, I listen to NPR in the car.  For road trips, I break out the audio books.  You guessed it, I don’t have an iPod either.  What is wrong with me?!  Since I don’t have an iPod and because I don’t really listen to anything while working, I guess podcasts don’t (yet) have a place in my life.

However, let’s assume that I did listen & subscribe to podcasts, my list would probably include something like The Sound of Young America, recommended by my brilliant & resourceful friend Nathan (he claims I bounce ideas off him too much and rely on his input too often without giving credit, so this should cover me for the next year or so).

thing #20: youtube

Since I secretly hope my future kids become bgirls or bboys instead of soccer players or football players or whatever, and because it’s timely, I thought I’d share this video:

But seriously folks, I heart YouTube.  It’s therapeutic.  If I’m having a crap day, goofing off on YouTube for a few minutes often helps me out.  It works the same whenever I need inspired or motivated (I’ll spare you links to boring stuff like that).  And on those nights when you’re sitting around with your friends reminiscing about old movies and such, YouTube to the rescue.

thing #19: power tools page

Long ago and far away, the lovely Joy and I created the Power Tools page.  It was a fun little project!  The best thing that’s happened to it so far, imo, is the catalog search plugin.   I also like the freedom that comes with knowing the page is a work in progress.  We can try different things, add to the page, take away from it, etc.  It’s almost like a refreshing little vacation; an opportunity to get away from the large, unwieldy, and bureaucratic projects we often take part in.  That’s definitely one of the drawbacks, and something worthy of an entirely separate post, of working for a large library system.

thing #18: web 2.0 award winners

In looking over the list, it’s so nice to see WorldCat made the cut in the books category!  Library tools are often the red-headed step child of web 2.0; but not in this case.  In my never-ending attempt to get us to consume less (and to make libraries look a little more cool), whenever I mention a book online anywhere, I always try to link to the WorldCat info page, rather than Amazon, etc.  So often, it seems that people automatically jump to buying a book, rather than checking it out from their local library.  May my links to WorldCat be a friendly reminder that a more prudent choice is possible.

And for mostly aesthetic reasons, I am loving Visual Complexity.  Pretty pretty!

thing #17: google docs

What a thing of beauty it is when documents are not tied to a hard drive or a physical memory device.  That’s why I’m kind of in love with Google Documents.  You don’t every have to worry about emailing a document or forgetting your flash drive somewhere.  All you need is the Internet.

Web-based apps like Google Docs are even better when they’re used in a collaborative way.  No more clogging up people’s inboxes!  No more sending a document back and forth countless times!

Here are some real-life testimonials of when Google Docs has saved the day for me in regards to collaboration:

• I do work for an Aids in Africa non-profit (website is a work in progress!).  Every year we have a booth at ComFest.  In effort to get appropriate “staffing” for the booth, we created a schedule with a Google Docs spreadsheet and emailed all volunteers about it.  Since everyone had access, each person was able to go into the document and schedule themselves for a time slot.  Genius!

• In a slightly more delightful way, I used a Google Docs spreadsheet to get people to sign up to bring meals to some dear friends shortly after they had their first baby.  No one, including the less-techie people, had any problems using it and people even took the initiative to add a few columns such as “What dish are you bringing?”  Two heads are better than one!

Overall, I love how Google Docs removes wire-crossing email mistakes from the equation.  Much less room for human error!  And, you don’t even have to have a gmail account to access a document.   You can share a document with anyone, no matter what email provider they use.

things #15 & #16: wikis

Wikis: always a lurker/consumer, rarely a contributor.*  I am a web 2.0 lame-o.

Maybe it’s because I think wikis are generally lacking when it comes to design?  I am girl who judges the book by its cover, so if it’s not pretty, I’m typically not having it.

However, I really like it when wikis get used like this.  The session proposal wiki is awesome!  So much so that I kind of pondered heading off to Chicago somewhat last minute.  But then I slept on it and changed my mind.  Looking at the attendees list, I would be one of the few girls going.  Hmmm.  Not sure how I feel about that.  Plus, I would probably just feel more dumb rather than more empowered about Drupal.  And we must not forget that the economy is in the crapper these days; probably not the best idea to burn fossil fuels and tax payers’ dollars in order to get out there.

*But now thanks to this wiki, I am becoming less of a lurker and more of a contributor.

thing #14: library 2.0*

One of my classmates in high school, whose name I cannot remember, would always debate with me about labeling people, insisting that it was a very narrow thing to do.  He was a total hippy — complete with all the “recreational” things hippys like to do.  This was the kid who, in art class, convinced the teacher that we should listen to exclusively Steve Miller Band and Bob Marley (and the occasional Grateful Dead) while painting.  Unfortunately for me, this was the general culture at my school.  I would rather chew glass than listen to “that kind” of music and partake of “that kind” of culture.

I was a punk rock straight edge kid.  He despised that I labeled myself straight edge and would CONSTANTLY debate me about it.  Over a decade later, I have to say: he was right.  Labels (tags) are for things, not people.  Tagging things is the best!  I mean, COME ON, “folksonomy” is one of the BEST WORDS EVER.  On the other hand, labeling people may be convenient, but it quickly becomes snarky and toxic.

Not only was he right, but I have also grown to love Bob Marley and Steve Miller Band (still hate the Dead though).  The high school version of myself is rolling over in her grave right now.

What does this have to do with library 2.0?

I think the most library-esque web 2.0 thing that we can capitalize on is tagging.  What a fabulous way to bring a craptastic catalog to life.  Just look at what Darien Library has done so far with their fledgling SOPAC.  Although I wish it were in alpha order, I love the tag cloud on the right.  And I love their special “better than the book” tag.  Genius!

Someone slipped me a Darien Library card number, allowing me to do some tagging of my own.  I ran into a surprising problem: it doesn’t appear to let me create a multi-word tag.  Strange.  For this (lovely) book, I tried to add the tag “talking animals.”  It separated the phrase into two tags.  Surely, I must be missing something because the tag cloud on the right makes it quite clear that multi-word tags are possible.  If you’re able to add multi-word tags on Darien’s SOPAC, please enlighten me!

I can’t wait for web 2.0 stuff to come live at CML’s catalog.  For reals, I can’t wait!

And I’ll say it again: I heart tagging (and the word “folksonomy”).

*Sometimes, when libraries talk about “library 2.0″ and “web 2.0,” I fear they have become the equivalent of THAT GUY who wears the band’s tshirt to said band’s concert.  You know, that guy who makes the cool things, those that are supposed to be subtle, a bit too obvious and obnoxious.  I don’t want to be that guy.