YouTube is a part of life

I have been watching YouTube videos for at least 3 years--it seems longer--because I have a teenaged son. "Mom! Come look at this!" usually means that I am about to be:

1. disgusted


2. revolted


3. mildly amused


4. amazed


5. entertained


6. informed

My son is older now, and he deigns to admit that I may actually know what's going on in the world, so he will ask me if I've seen whatever--the man who can sing like a girl or mean kitty. Library Ninja is the name chosen by the teens for their page on our library website.

Increasingly, there are videos created by my family and friends there, and I can watch them whenever I want. I was going to refer you to one or two, but after viewing them again, I've had second thoughts. We are using video more on our library website because we can "park it" on YouTube. I know that's not the correct terminology, but in other words, it doesn't drain our capacity.

I prefer videos or vblogs to podcasts for most communication that might lend itself to one or the other. More about that in the podcast blog.

I am out of order with my blog posts. I am waiting for a reaction from some other people before I discuss Google Docs.

Wikis

I think I would have been happier if I had never known about the Discussion and History tabs in Wikipedia. It's just terrifying to see the process revealed. How do we decide that a particular piece of information is a fact? This is especially hard for librarians, I think. We worry so much about credible sources. Of course, we have always issued a disclaimer for any information from Wikipedia. Do editorial boards of venerable reference sources have similar heated discussions? Of course they do. In the end, someone has to make a judgment call about what gets published. Ultimately, the user of the information must look at everything that's out there and make choices about what to accept as fact.
Making wiki pages was pretty easy. I did have trouble trying to title one of my pages "Interests" or "Interests & Hobbies." Each time it would jump to someone else's page who liked scuba diving. Finally, I titled it "Stuff I Like" and I was able to proceed. My pages are under "Debi" if anyone wants to look.

LibWorm is a Keeper

I never have to sit in a meeting again and be clueless when someone says, "Did you hear about that library that took away that 7-year-old's library card?" or something like that. Sometimes those routed journals don't get to your desk for 3-6 months!
I am using Google Reader and feeling very efficient about it, and I do have some professional subscriptions there, but LibWorm really just wraps it up for me. I like the categories, so I can focus primarily on what I do every day and what I am interested in. I like not having to have an account and remember the password. I also like that I will never have to explain to the city's IT department how and why this is job-related.
One of my favorite "things."

LibraryThing

I have the strangest sensation that I have just come down out of a very cluttered attic and I need to brush the cobwebs out of my hair. I set up an account and put in a few books with tags, and set out to explore. The group for Librarians who LibraryThing was good--there was a string going about dealing with patrons and it was pretty funny. Apparently there is a group called I See Dead People's Books, but when I tried to find it, I got 1697 hits. There must be some more powerful search strategies, but I have not found them yet. The tools section offered some good stuff and ways to sort of connect the dots with applications that could be useful. I was surprised to recognize pictures of my favorite authors when I hit the "gallery" tab.
I have heard of some practical ways that libraries are using LibraryThing for the tagging, etc. My impression at this point in time is that I wish I had been in on the ground floor and watched this build, and learned to navigate. I think it would take me a number of hours to really learn what is here and how to get to it.

Digging In

Digg led me to a a good book. I was listening to NPR in the car at lunchtime today, and I heard an interesting discussion with an author. As I was trolling through Digg, I looked at the popular science category, and I found an article from Elle.com about how our brains work to make choices. The article mentions the book, How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer, and I thought, "That's the book they were talking about on the radio." So I clicked over to the library catalog and found a copy of this very book on the shelf, went out and picked it up and checked it out. So NPR gets some credit, but I would not have remembered the title or author's name without having seen it again.
The new diggs looked like a good source of cutting edge stuff in whatever area you might be interested in. I'm sure it's satisfying to participate and vote for things and "bury" things you don't like. Very democratic.

Delicious

I set up an account and imported my favorites, but I don't think there's anything uniquely wonderful there that anyone doesn't already know about.
It is very cool and useful that our reference librarians are all contributing to a Delicious list of great reference websites. We have always shared websites within our library system, and I remember notebooks and note cards in little file boxes. Of course, finding them was sometimes an issue if we weren't all thinking of the same category or subject heading (see previous post). Another problem was that the links would change or disappear after a time.
Is there a way to check currency on your entire list of bookmarks without having to go to each one, one at a time? I didn't look for that on the Delicious site, but maybe there's an app for that?

Tagging is a hot topic for librarians

I have an uncomfortable feeling that a lot of old catalogers are rolling over in their graves. The idea of letting people choose their own tags! Can anarchy and chaos be far behind?
I have always been on the public service side of the library, so I am well acquainted with how people look for things. I have often served as an interpreter, as in, "Let's try this subject heading--or that subject heading."
When our automation system came online, we were so concerned about the subject headings that we placed copies of Sears List of Subject Headings at all OPAC locations. If you are too young, or not into cataloging, this is an 80-year-old resource and guide and was, at the time, a large red book that weighed about 30 lbs. Did anyone EVER look into that book? No. Did they use keyword search? You bet! It wasn't long, in fact, until all of us librarians were using keyword search most of the time.
I have come to the conclusion that it would be added value if people put their own tags on our collection, in addition to the proper librarian-assigned subject headings. People will look for things the way they want to look, and arrange things to their liking, and feel more ownership if we allow them to have some input. The language and our knowledge base are evolving rapidly, and I don't think we can keep pace with it using the old traditional processes.