IM OK, UR OK

Okay, I've got a handle on what to say on this week's topic. Well, this week's first topic, anyway. And Tyche has smiled upon me and graced me with an hour away from the customer service desk to wring out my thoughts. Or maybe that was my supervisor. Whatever.

Instant messaging is a communication tool, just like the telephone, carrier pigeon, and semaphore. That's it. There's no Magic there. So the order to go over the top is Typed and Displayed in a desktop window rather than Scrawled on a note and Tied to a bird's leg. The sergeant in the forward trench still gets the same message.

It's no surprise, of course, that few of the Old Guard are willing to Climb Aboard and start using instant messages for business communication. It took the telephone 30 years or more to supplant the telegraph. Email is pretty well established, existing in a recognizable form since the 1970s. And Uncle Sam made it, so it has to be Good.

What was the question?

Right, libraries using The Messages Of Instant. Is it too early? Is it too late? Why bother? Which library got the phone first, and when? Did libraries use the telegraph at all? Or did they just pop off to the Western Union station like everyone else? People with internets at home searching for info online, are they pining to speak to a librarian? Or are they just using Google?

Google "im librarian". I dare you. Top link? Davis Library. They will get the most traffic as a result. Googling "library im" produces similar results. A wiki, one of the articles we were supposed to read, and, you guessed it, Davis Library. Looks like UNC Got Their Act Together and have risen to the top of the Google Sea. There are a few other uni libraries on the list, as well, so they'll get the runoff. This is how Things are Found.

The only way to combat this and really compete for the instant message traffic is to get the message out to the local populace in First Life. Radio ads. TV ads. Newspaper ads. Street urchins handing out flyers at the beach. Yes, I know the city's communication standards say it's supposed to be "fliers". Sue me.

Send the subpoena via carrier pigeon.

Feed Finding. or How to Lose Your Social Life Within 72 Hours

I started this whole thing with about a million feeds, so finding new ones from the list of recommended sites was not exactly what I would call enjoyable. Nevertheless, I dove in and played around a bit. Of the four, only Technorati was really worth the effort. Topix had the local fix, but lacked a certain je ne sais quoi. I couldn't get any of Syndic8's links to work (perhaps a result of poor network speed or some other X Factor) and poor Feedster seems to be locked in perpetual beta testing.

They all seem to do similar things, though. Find cool stuff for you. Not like Google, which tends to find Wikipedia. Technorati's beauty lies in movement. It changes right before your eyes, lending a sense of urgency to what would otherwise be a mundane quest. YouTube does the same thing, but is focused solely on videos. Including this little gem. Which I found thanks to Technorati.

Funny how things work.

Actively searching for feeds is not how I've become the diseased specimen you see before you, however. I've contracted most of them virally, because they were mentioned or linked to in a blog I was already reading. Click-click, and I've got another digital contagion. By the way, you should check out Questionable Content.

Someone told me I should delete some feeds. Not a bad idea, but what if one day I want to know just what is going on in Israel?

Enough links for now, neh?

Child's Play Charity

Do the right thing. Follow the link.

RSS? What's that?

This is a weird one. I've been using RSS feeds for a while, now. I was originally turned on to Bloglines by a co-worker, who said it would be a much easier and more productive way of keeping up with my favorite webcomics, like Penny Arcade. Later, that same co-worker mentioned the Google Reader. Already having a gmail account, it was a natural migration for me. Later, I added news, literary, and yes, even library-related feeds.

Personally, all these feeds started out as fun, but now it's turned into an after-school special. At first, Google would only go up to 100. In other words, if you had unread feeds totalling 100 or 500 or whatever, it would just read "100+". Now it goes up to 1000. So it reads "1000+" most of the time. This can be very disheartening. I find I have feeds for things I don't read often enough, very often, or at all. I know, I've been bad. The reader made it too easy to sign up for new things, and made it impractical to follow any webcomics without RSS. Webcomics, remember, were how I got into this, and still comprise the bulk of my subscriptions. It's alright, though. It does mean I don't have to check Order of the Stick every stinking day because they don't keep a regular schedule. Also, I avoid that sinking feeling when William Gibson hasn't posted today.


How can libraries use this? The same way anyone can. By having feeds the public can access, we can easily spread information about programs, policies, and personnel. Imagine an online version of the Library Update, with all the same information, but updated weekly, or monthly, rather than bi-monthly. Customers could subscribe to the feed, and get regular transfusions of library program information, either for their favorite branch, or the entire system. Throw in some links for online registration and you've actually got something worth having.

VBPL Talks is far more effective than the old system of one person emailing questions and answers to the entire staff. The comments alone have allowed a conversation to develop between the LCDT team and the staff about a given topic, one that is accessible to the rest of the department. This can lead to more a more open workplace environment, with staffers able to say anonymously what they might never vocalize in response to a given departmental policy clarification.

RSS has certainly changed the way many people access content. I know people who won't even subscribe to a feed if each post isn't fully displayed in their reader. This was the fate of the Freakonomics blog after it switched to the NY Times website. I stopped reading because it was no longer about economics. Plenty of webcomics and most newspapers don't show full posts in Google Reader, so I'm used to it.

Final plug: I Can Has Cheezburger? Guaranteed 98% work safe!

What I think of "2.0"

Blogging at the circulation desk again. You think I would have learned.

I took a while to figure out just what I wanted to say here. That's why I'm a week behind my comrades at VBPL.

What is 2.0? It's a label applied to something that has already happened. Kind of like the phrase "Middle Ages", which was coined during the Renaissance. Incidentally, those same talking heads came up with the phrase "Renaissance", as a way of saying that classical civilization was being reborn. It wasn't, of course. Western civilization had been changed irrevocably, but I digress.

A few years back, someone said, "Hey, there are a lot of neat things you can do online these days that you couldn't before. Blogs, social networks, RSS, wikis; what these things need is a catchy label to identify them as different from the thing that came before." And so, Web 2.0 was born. And by extension, so was Web 1.0 - the old paradigm of "go to a website and click on stuff". The phrase "Web 2.0" is largely unknown even today. Ask your average person, and they've never heard of it, even if they use all of these "2.0" things. It is just another way for intellectuals and cultural elitists to segregate themselves from the masses.

Library 2.0? That's a different animal. It seems that librarians love catalogs, and categories, and labels of all kinds. So, when all this neat stuff got a name, some enterprising individuals thought it would be keen if libraries could get in on it, too. Naturally, we're a few years behind (portability is big now - if it doesn't fit in your pocket, what good is it?), but that hasn't stopped well-meaning technologists with master's degrees from trying to reshape how libraries interact with their customers. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but as an organization, we need to pick and choose specific applications for specific purposes. We need to ask, "Is this useful? How useful is it?" before jumping feet first into a given app.

Some of them make sense. Use RSS to inform patrons of upcoming events. Or even just to update the library's website. Genius! Have a profile on MySpace or Facebook and have volunteers as friends. Brilliant! Other bits are not so much. Who reads library blogs? Librarians, that's who. I don't know the stats for our pilot IM reference program, but the people I've talked to that are in it say it's pretty quiet. Speaking of stats, it would be nice to know the numbers on traffic for our existing online resources. But, I'm not on that team, so if such statistics exist, they are for me verböten. Again, I digress. Back to useful apps.

Twitter is a neat way to communicate, but 140 characters just isn't enough to convey complex messages. Nevertheless, it could still be useful for intra-department comm traffic. Who's at a meeting, or on break, or stuck in the stacks. These would also need some kind of portable device to access Twitter in order to be truly effective. Back to portability, then. I doubt the city will spring for IPhones, but a man can dream.

Wow. Much longer post than I anticipated. Perhaps it is time to wrap this up. In closing, you might want to read this post from the Annoyed Librarian. And be wary of anyone with a manifesto. Buzzwords do not equal action. What you have to look out for are armbands and flags.

A Link to Lita

This is a link to Lita's blog. Double-plus blastback kudos if you can figure out who it is!

7 1/2 Habits

Yeah. Just getting around to typing this while at the circulation desk. Not the easiest prospect in the world, mind you. I was interrupted three times while typing the first sentence, and another three while typing this one!

I'd better get on with it, then.

So, I watched the 15 minute video about the 7 1/2 habits of lifelong learning, courtesy of the Charlotte & Mecklenburg Library. Now I'm supposed to identify which of the habits is the easiest and which is the hardest.

Easy: Habit 7.5 - Play! I mean, c'mon. I refer to gadgets as "toys". Give me a new phone, or program, or whatever, and I want to "play around" with it to see how it works. I use those exact words. Take blogging, for instance. My first actual blog was just a goof. Funny pictures I found in newspapers with a silly title. No real commentary. Just fun. Same thing with the circulation program at work. Just clicked on buttons to see what they do. Especially if I was told not to.

More coming soon. Gotta jet.

UPDATE: I now have a few minutes to squeeze the rest of this post. I'm holed up in the book return room. As long as no one calls...

Okay, the hardest thing: nuts! Left the notepad on my desk. Oh, well. A minor inconvenience.

I've always had trouble with goals. When I was a kid, The Man said I needed goals, but I never could quite nail them down. I was seven! I wanted to be an astronaut cowboy firefighter or something. My objectives these days tend to be limited. Things like, say, make it to the end of the work day. Finish the adventure for Thursday's session of Dungeons & Dragons. Put the controller down and go to sleep (always a tough one). Long term? Meh, I just want to retire comfortably. On some tropical island. But that is a goal, isn't it? Huh, maybe this isn't so hard, after all.

Oh, I still want to go to space, but these days it takes a lot of money to be a cosmonaut.

Welcome and Beware

Expect more posts soon.