Last of 23 things....Now onto 57 Varieties

1. What do you think about social media in the library?

I think it is useful. But more importantly, it is inevitable! We will be using it, interacting with patrons who use it, monitoring our profession through it, etc. I like the fact that we can use it and are encouraged to learn about it collectively instead of just ad hoc mentions now and then from astute coworkers.

2. What do you wish FPL was (or wasn't) doing?

YouTube Book Trailers, booktalks, podcasts of programs, videos of puppet shows, using social media to make ourselves more relevant day to day to our patrons.

3. Have you learned anything from this program?

Yes!

4. If so, what?

My short list includes!

TinyURL = brilliant
Slacker beats Pandora hands down
I am still confused about the technology we need to do podcasts
I am disappointed that we can't use YouTube in this city
If we give people the chance to check out our Lego photos online, they will do it!
We get MANY more hits on our website than I ever thought we did.
Facebook is a good place to be for our library and especially for short, recent bursts of info.
I'd like our catalog to be a better mesh with social media (somehow, don't ask me.....)
Let's take advantage of as much of it as possible to make ourselves highly relevant!

5. If not, what could we do better?

Print on Demand! for libraries?

For this assignment in the 23 Things, I decided to look into Print on Demand.
Since we get lots of demand for stuff we don't own, I thought this might be a direction some libraries may go. I was thinking that if the patron wants to pay the freight, we can bill them.

BUT, if we wanted to own the "new" book at the library, maybe the patron could pay $10 (the cost of an I.L.L.) and we'd eat the rest of the cost and do a fast, guerilla cataloging job on the new book. Slap an RFID tag on it, create a short catalog record and when the book is returned, finish the task.

The machines are really costly, however. But maybe we'd be a first adopter and get a coolio grant for one??

Check out Espresso Book Machine! $75,000 for the machine! Whew! It's a division of Ingram. Maybe they'd give us a deal if we order lots of books from them? Anyway, a POD machine could be in a college or university library and the pinhead students could pay for a book printed out of the machine. I'd LOVE to go see one of these things work.

Does this count as a 23 Thing?

I have Wikied

I have now wiki'd (wikied?) an entry in the FPL restaurant guide.
I will be interested to read what others add.

Sadly, I turn to wikipedia for lots of things these days.
When I wanted to remind myself about the difference between sulfates and sulfites, I went to wikipedia.

Whenever I hear about a town I would like to explore, I go to the Wikipedia entry. Not exclusively, but I do like the general run down of the history and locales.

I am too brain dead right now to suggest wiki projects for FPL, but will likely nod with agreement when my coworkers recommend some.

Podcasts

I am a huge fan of Podcasts and have many that I download to my iPod regularly.
I particularly enjoy NPR programs.

After visiting a few of the sites from this 23 Things Assignment, I am convinced that FPL could make good use of podcasting in several areas.

I listened to a very good reading of Jan Brett's book The Mitten from the Worthington Library page. It was well done and enjoyable. We could offer this kind of children's programming from our library as well.

The Denver Public Library offered Podcasts of children reading some familiar nursery rhymes. This was pretty painful. I guess it would be okay if you were the child's parent. But for the casual listener, this was just excrutiating. Let's not do this.

Many of the sites were inactive. I don't know if the website was not working or if they had ceased podcasting all together.

Here are some of the ways we could podcast

stories
nursery rhymes/songs
booktalks (grouped or individually)
book discussion groups
student storytellers could record their stories to promote the Lone Star Storytelling Festival
poetry contest winners reading their work
Tips of the day
something to do with New arrivals

Those are my thoughts. I like the podcasts and hope that we can get the equipment and time to do this on a regular basis.

Hulu, Who knew?

I have tuned into to Hulu a number of times to find some tv shows.
It has worked reasonably well. A couple of times I had sound issues, but that MAY have been with my computer and not Hulu.

Mostly I choose to watch things on my NetFlix instant watch account since that is already paid for and commercial free. But if it is not available from NetFlix, I next go to the NBC, PBS, CBS site and watch it there. As a last result I will go to Hulu. Seems to be a fine system I have developed for myself.

I think the most thought provoking thing about the 23 Thnigs questions were the ones about how this will impact public libraries. I'd like to think that maybe we could spend less of our dough on dvds in the future as folks find other ways to watch movies, tv shows, etc.

Right now, Frisco Public checks out 10,000 dvds a month from our youth and 10,000 dvds a month from the adult services collections. So 20% of our monthly circulations are dvds. I don't see it going down soon (with the poor economy). But perhaps as technology catches up, we can find ways to direct people to downloads of video and not house the physical dvds in the library. That would be fine by me.

Plus, I want to put in a plug for Redboxes. $1 to rent a movie in a minute from a Redbox, 1 minute to return it to ANY Redbox (try THAT with a Blockbuster Video!). This is my next go-to way to see a movie that is not available from NetFlix. You can find them all over the place and they even send you a thoughtful email about your rental (where it came from, when it is due, etc) AND then sends you an email when you have returned the movie! That is very cool.

Why Tube?

I, along with millions of people, have determined that You Tube is GREAT! .....and .....stupid.

As for usefulness to our public library, I think Book Trailers are a KILLER idea! I think you can get so creative with them, reach a new audience, have fun at work, and keep a wide variety of Book Trailers on our site. I would love to see us embrace this technology and use some space in the teen room to show our creations.

Some other uses might include:

How to check stuff out : e.g. check out videos, audios, books, etc. using our self check machines.

How to search for items.

Keep folks up to date on library changes and even the parking structure!

Short bookclub questions and discussions.

Virtual Tours of the Library

Storytimes or puppet shows for kids

How to do research for teens

.....stuff like that......

My two cents.

Pandora's Box

I created a couple of different Pandora radio stations for myself. I found this really easy and intuitive to do. But when I wanted to move it/post it/mention it/ on Facebook, I got some NONintuitive questions that I didn't know how to answer (to avoid getting a bunch of junk of my Facebook, or screwing it up, or allowing others access, etc.) so much for ease of use from that end.

However, the radio stations are very cool. The suggestions are pretty well targeted. And I enjoyed using it. I don't know how often I will be listening to music on my computer just because I am from a generation that has lots of cds, moved music to an iPod already, or can find it on satellite tv. But at least it is there.

Google Docs!

I have loved using Google Docs! I am able to access all sorts of spreadsheets and other shared documents from any computer. Sharing is easy and fast.
I really think this is an huge step forward and appreciate Adam showing me this a while back!

NYC Public Library embedded google map

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=denton,+tx&daddr=45th+Ave+to:30.372875,-90.966797+to:New+york+city+public+library&geocode=FXnR-gEd9N01-inRsYjAoExMhjEb-xRIy3REcg%3BFSo6vAIdUgtd-g%3B%3BFTzWbQIdmCCX-yk7ynZ9AFnCiTEz1RUn5gAUtw&hl=en&mra=dpe&mrcr=0&mrsp=2&sz=4&via=1,2&sll=37.09024,-77.607422&sspn=31.564064,56.162109&layer=tc&ie=UTF8&ll=40.752589,-73.981504&spn=0.013329,0.054846&z=14&cbll=40.752623,-73.981515&panoid=79UozX-FNDI3Y5ga1RdJTA&cbp=11,208.13652299999998,,0,-11.732978&photoid=fr-2576086795

good time for tiny url huh?

TinyURL and USendIt

Yippee! A couple of applications that I will definitely use.

1. TinyURL: Great for making a memorable (and usable) URL for some long, complicated thing that no one would use or remember. This is great for sending out photos of the Lego buildings or linking things to our website that make for a quick and easy click-it!

Very easy to use, no problems emailing the tinyurl out, piece of cake!

2. USendIt: Whether it be a library video or something that we try to video on a new MinoHD Flip Video camera (that I really want to buy), this will be a simple way to send the large video files via email. I can send videos out to patrons or to family members and not have it kicked back due to the large nature of MPeg files. or other other video files.

Great tips! Thanks!

Facebook

I am a facebook user....sometimes.

I have an account and usually only check it when my gmail says someone has posted something.

But I do see its value in keeping in touch with far flung friends and family.
I do not see its value in keeping in touch with remote acquaintances or becoming a "fan of CSI: Miami" or some such thing.

I also have a slight problem in understanding all the levels of use and the lack of privacy. I'd like to have a facebook account just for family and have tried to do that in the past by unfriending acquaintances. But then I just get more and more requests from co-workers to be friends and I don't want to ignore them for fear of being "mean" or "a bad coworker." But really, I just want my family to have an easy way to see photos of a trip, get the latest on my daughter's college hunt, or keep up with my parents' health concerns.

Unfortunately, I will get bogged down with stuff from people who wouldn't have sent me the info via email. I like to use Facebook because I can get updates out to lots of family with one entry. Bam! it's out there for them to read at their leisure. But I end up hiding lots of friends who overload my facebook account with really trivial stuff. I will probably end up unfriending them over time.

As for libraries: seems like a good way for interested folks to link in. Get info, photos, updates, book reviews, etc. A good medium for that kind of thing. I like it that FPL has a facebook page and would like to see it get a lot of use.

LinkedIn

Hmmm.

Second try at this.

Linked In account.
Linked to CW, Novell folks, law school roommate, old library pal.

now to see if this is useful....

Good Reads

I have been a Good Reads subscriber for some time now. It is fun to see what others are reading, get their reviews, and make lists of books TO READ! It is hard for me to keep up with it, obviously. But I do enjoy getting notifications of new books when friends add them.

Good Reads has much to recommend it. You can track books, find "read alikes," see reviews from people you trust, and much more. I think it would be nice within our department to have us all on Good Reads. We have such diverse reading interests and such diverse schedules! that it would make it easier to see what others are reading, to whom they would recommend it, and ideas for readers' advisory.

Delicious

I'm tired. I don't get it. I can't get it to work. I don't want to log in to one more *&^%ing thing in order to save a bookmark that I can either just (1) remember, (2) put in my favorites, (3) RSS feed to myself, (4) put in my google reader, (5) write on a post-it note, (6) not use if I can't be bothered to remember it anyway.....

I give up on this one. I have no idea how a librarian could use it and don't care.

TAG You're "It"

Tagging. Using spray paint to cover a wall of library books.....
no wait.

Tagging. Adding little notations to items (in the library world) that can link like things together.
The trick is that "like things" means different things to different people.

So, a Harry Potter book could have tags of Fantasy, England, Rowling, etc. But it could also include Wizards, Dragons, Reluctant Heroes.

The idea is that users could "tag" items in the libraries catalog and thus create links between items and suggestions of places to go to find more items like that one.

So we could have the LC headings of Cookery AND we could have users' Tags linking cookbooks to other items on entertaining, gardening, nutrition, health, chefs, etc.

I think it is a fun idea and one we might want to explore. Users would participate in the process!

Instant Messaging

The new 23 Things topic is Instant Messaging.
I have used AIM before and it has been okay.
I have used the new communicator at work as well.

Libraries could use some form of IM for quick reference questions. For longer responses or more involved conversations, a librarian could always take the question via IM and then respond later via email.

Does usage ever get so high that it would be difficult for one librarian to be the designated IM reference librarian for an hour or so? Probably not. But you wouldn't want to try to keep up with it when you are on desk since we get called away from the desk by patrons now and then.

Another advantage of IM over a phone call is that you could copy and paste into an Instant message. We could have some "Canned Responses" that we could drop into the IM reply. Everybody would get the same "official" response to recurring questions that way.