In Conclusion

The 23 exercises have led me to explore sites that I would not have come across myself. Thank you!

#22. Explore Web 2.0 Award winners

Some of the award winners are actually old friends. Like all of us I've visited a number of sites for the 23 exercises, but beyond that I've also been using Yelp on a regular basis, Craigslist (of course), Google Maps, iGoogle, Farecast, all extremely useful sites for various private endeavors. I couldn't really think of any library application, but of course it's good to know that these sites exist.

Not very library relevant, either, a site called "realtravel" caught my eye since I'm about to go on a trip to New Mexico. According to the introduction "realtravel is the travel guide and trip planner powered by advice from real travelers." The sites most prominent feature is a searchable collection of travel blogs. The keyword "Albuquerque" conjured up two, uhm, not very exciting travelblogs. "We didn't have a lot of time... we ordered in a pizza and went to sleep," while the other one informed me that "We had tire trouble... We picked up a bungie [sic] cord and the hook stuck in the truck tire. The rubber part did a little cosmetic damage to the passenger side." Relevance? To pick from the "Featured Travel Plans", or "Featured Travel Bloggers" on the front page seems a better approach. I hit on a very well written & informative blog that way ("United States by little haxby"/New Mexico).

Browsing...

Coverpop is colorful, amazing, but at the same time I cannot figure out what it could possibly be good for...

Ning on the other hand, is finally a winner! I remember Helen Blowers pointed out the site at her presentation. The keyword "library" brings up some nice examples how this site can be used to create a website for smaller libraries, for units within larger libraries, or as a forum for staff.

Lulu, which allows you to "publish your own manuscript" could also conceivably be used for library purposes. Special Collection issues small quantity, limited edition books (for instance local, or oral history). Lulu might be a fast and inexpensive way to print them, maybe even present them to the general public.

#21: Audio eBooks

I have a Mac, so my only option was to try Project Gutenberg. I couldn't find any information on the homepage, or under FAQ, as to what formats would be available, so I decided to pick the book/file first, and then see if I'd be able to download it. Audio books are an absolutely perfect medium for poetry, so I chose Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Apple iTunes Audiobook was one of the formats available, so at first it seemed that this exercise was moving along quite nicely. I was really looking forward to hearing the poems. Unfortunately, trying to download the book turned out ot be a rather frustrating experience. The Main Project Gutenberg site delivered a useless text file, and a listed mirror site (knowledgerush.com) doesn't even offer audio files. I was finally successful downloading from Seattle's "Project Gutenberg Reading Room," but soon noticed that instead of the whole book, my download only contained the editor's notes. I realized that I had to download every chapter separately. The editor's notes were followed in the second download by the author's preface; the third file, believe it or not, offered the editor's notes to the author's preface! The forth download finally brought me to Part 1, poem 1-4. Awkward.
Meanwhile I had discovered that MP3 worked faster and more reliably than Apple iTunes Audiobook. The files on Gutenberg greatly vary in length and quality, and I kept hitting the odd ones. Ezra Pound's Cathay disappointingly was only one poem from Cathay, and Winnetou I by Karl May (in German) started with chapter 6! It's fun to browse, to listen to Basho in Japanese, Pushkin in Russian, but unfortunately the collection seems very inconsistent.

#20. Podcasts

I did not take long this time for me to get hooked. I decided to try Yahoo!Podcast search right after I finished the " What is a podcast" tutorial. I tried "Robert Frost", and immediately came across a site that interests me: "Poem of The Day." I already have iTunes on my Mac, so all I needed to do was go to the podcaster's website, www.sonibyte.com, and subscribe. From there I went to check out the Podcast.net directory, specifically poetry, and hey!, I found a podcast mentioned this morning at the University Inn presentation by Helene Blowers, the original creator of the Learning 2.0 program: LibraryLoft Podcasts by the Public Library of Charlotte. Somethings's wrong here, though, all hits on this site are dated November/December 2006... Strange. Refreshing doesn't help. So on to podcastalley.com. A German book review podcast (Guten Morgen Buchtipps) also slips effortlessly onto iTunes. Adding the feed to my blog doesn't work, though. Back to Yahoo, where I discover "Das Literatur Cafe", also a German book review podcast, now the latest addition to my sidebar.

Würzburg

#19. YouTube

Hard to believe, but true... What I'm most curious to hear & see right now, a clip showing the Franconian poet Fitzgerald Kusz, was not to be found on any of the 8 listed sites. It seems German poetry is just a tad to obscure even for YouTube. Searching for the better known Durs Grünbein, I still find only one video of very poor quality on YouTube, and a link ("played from www.zdf.de") that doesn't work on Yahoo!Video. Let's move on to some nice, mundane images from my hometown. Voila!

#18. Firefox Add-ons and Extensions

I've been using Safari. I probably keep using it, but I have to admit that the Firefox Search Engines Bar is pretty niffty. Adding the CruzCat Search could not have been easier. It's definitely something we can recommend to patrons. I aso added LibX and Zotero, but haven't played with them yet.

#17. Online Applications & Tools

I picked Zoho for the exercise, but I'm not entirely happy with it. I imported a couple of documents. It is easy enough, except that I have to refresh the page every time for the document to actually show up. "Post to blog" doesn't work at all; the "blog settings dialog box" never opens. Strange, since the other three publishing dialog boxes pop up without a problem. So I opt for "Doc Roll":
Post Scriptum: Viewing the blog I realize that the document posted to the blog faster than lightning without the dialog box detour. WOW! Never mind then, great tool!

#16. Library 2.0

Of the 5 articles, I liked John Riemer's best, offering what seems to me the most level-headed and pragmatic approach. Emerging technologies should not cause librarians to breathlessly declare every fad the next grand earth-shattering innovation in how libraries operate. Let's stop shaking in our boots and take a deep breath here. We only need to stay informed, tuned in to our patrons' needs and expectations, and show flexibility in implementing changes that are actually useful.

#15. Custom search engines

Since I already have a Google account I added a Google Custom Search Engine to this blog. Belinda already covered the VRC relevant artist search, so I indulged a personal interest by creating a search engine for German language poets and poetry.

#14. Instant Messaging and VoIP

I've used MSN Instant Messenger in the past. It's too late in the day to chat with the Learning 2.0 Team, but I left an offline message. I agree with Mitternacht about reference staff use.

#13. Wikis 2

If I'm not mistaken, Belinda had already introduced the Visual Resource Collection on the Learning 2.0 Wiki. I only completed the paragraph with content from our site ("About Us") and figured out how to link to SlideCat. How easy, how fun. I love wikis!

#12. Wikis 1

What I find most surprising about Wikis is that they're so self-regulating. Every article I read mentions how vulnerable wikis are to spam and vandalism, but as Wikipedia shows, amazingly enough the forces of Good and Evil do balance out in the end.
I like the suggestions on webjunction.org ("What can my library do with a wiki?")

#11. Folksonomies: LibraryThing

Favorite title: In Search of Lost Time. Clicking on one search result, "In Search of Lost Time: Proust 6-pack (Proust Complete) by Marcel Proust," leads to "Remembrance of things past [sic] by Marcel Proust; French title: A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu," which, in a way, already is a recommendation. The different titles indicate different translations/translators, so if I'm looking for In Search of Lost Time I'm not necessarily looking for C. K. Scott-Moncrieff's early translation Remembrance of Things Past.
The "LibraryThing Recommendations Machine" produces very obvious results like Proust biographies, books by Proust contemporaries, but also recommendations that seem far-fetched at first, like The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, or Leonard Woolf's autobiography. Hitting the "see all recommendations" button, of course, immediately explains the connection.
The LibraryThing tags, e.g. "20th century french literature" are much broader and more general than Cruzcat's very specific subject heading "Proust, Marcel, 1871-1922 -- Translations into English"
I like this site a lot. I'll definitely be back for more.

See some very interesting TAG CLOUDS on manyeyes

#10 Technorati etc

I pinged Technorati immediately after completing "9 continued", pinged Ping-o-Matic's most popular, then bookmarked the Ping-o-Matic page using del.icio.us. Now I have to wait. I'll check back later.
Update:
After 4PM I searched the first half dozen Ping-o-Matic sites, but no sign of my blog entry. Judging from the post times of the search results containing my keywords (5 hours was the most recent entry), it might be a good idea to wait until tomorrow before I check again.
Update:
I was curious, came back to try one more, the last site on the list, and... IceRocket just came through for me! Nice! 2hours and 46 min. How exciting! I can consider myself published! Still nothing on Technorati or Blogdigger, but let's just leave it at that.

Del.icio.us continued

Useful, no doubt. I opened an account for this exercise starting with UCSC related bookmarks. I can see how we could utilize it at the VRC. Some patrons seem overwhelmed when we show them our extensive online list of digital image resources. To create a shorter list when needed we could pull specific links, group them del.icio.us.ly, and patrons would still be able to access them online from anywhere. Or we could recommend that patrons use del.icio.us to create their own lists of bookmarks according to their specific needs, even find additional resources by looking at other users' lists (e.g. ARTstor: "saved by 123 other people")

#9 Del.icio.us Part 1, Bloglines/Feeds revisited

Playing with it...

On a detour, I added shortcuts leading to Lee's and Danielle's blogs for opposite ends of the 2.0 spectrum, and Sarah's for balance. I learned the hard way that it's a good idea to look at other participants blogs instead of blindly plowing through the exercises, lonely laboring under the wrong impression that nobody's actually reading my collected works of yawn inducing yadayada. Here's some more yada harking back to Bloglines (Jeez, bold is work, the one occasion when I wish I had a PC, so I wouldn't have to HTML every friggin time I'd like something bold, or italics, or crossed out, or...):

When I added the del.icio.us Learning 2.0 feed to the sidebar using the blogger template I noticed that it only displayed a given number of headlines separately, leading straigh to individual articles, not to an index or frontpage. The same turned out to be true for my Spiegel feed. Darn! I hadn't noticed before! Instead of me Dummy trying to wrestle the blogger template, I handed the URLs over to Bloglines to fix the problem for me. Took care of it in no time. Now I'm sold. Viva Bloglines!

O, and I changed "Die Edeltraud". I did not wish death upon poor Edeltraud; "die" is simply & less nefariously German for "the".

Last word before moving on to the next exercise

Meanwhile I have been informed by my colleagues, that although I spend a good part of my waking life on the computer, where I indulge in all kinds of what I consider geeky activities & treats, I’m apparently still sadly under-qualified and therefore not worthy of the title “geek.” Ergo, I should not use the G-word; ergo it had to go, too.
The tongue-in-cheek tone is not considered entirely appropriate either.
For simplicity’s sake, let me just go all the way and vow that from now on I will vigorously suppress any misguided and pathetic attempt at humor or lightheartedness (while taking the exercises seriously). Let me be bone dry and positive & play it safe. (Icons courtesy of echosphere)

All better?

Inquires the geek of the geek. (To me, it's a term of endearment. Please don't make me cross it out, too!) I quick-fixed the last post, hoping whoever chose to voice his/her (inadvertently) hurt feelings anonymously elsewhere, gets the message. (Why not comment right here, by the way, to give me a chance to comment on the comment?) I'm a nice person, a friendly creature with a sense of humor, and I apologize from the bottom of my heart if I'm lacking the skill to convey that. The last post was not supposed to be dead serious.

#8 Second Life, Part 1, 2, 3

I watched the 3 recommended YouTube clips, read the 3 recommended articles, went to the Second Life site, looked around & watched a couple of Video Tutorials. And I have to say... C’mon!!!

You can try to justify it any old way you want, but let’s face it, it will always boil down to one simple fact: Second Life is about gaming, geek escapism from the real world. I can see how you one might feel it offers great opportunities to reach people in a whole new sphere, but the prerequisite will always be that you one (yes, you too, librarian pretending to undertake these adventures in the virtual world for strictly educational purposes) thoroughly enjoys spending lots of time in the animated realm of a game in the first place. That’s Second Life’s raison d’etre, the axiom; everything else only follows from there. If you one wants to join in and build schools and libraries there, excited about the details of the process, good for you one!
From my perspective, it’s the geek version of going to a developing country on a Peace Corp mission. I commend you one for doing so, but personally, I don’t feel any particular affinity to the country you one is so passionate about. It looks primitive to me. If you one is attracted to the culture, so you one wants to go connect with the populace and hold hands in support while they're taking steps towards literacy, one should go for it! Just don’t expect me to follow because it’s the thing to do. I beg to differ. I don’t believe it’s crucially important. It’s one among many countries in a big world in the vast expanse of the universe. It’s a game. A game by any other name… Participation will always be limited to those, who are drawn to games, who are attracted to the peculiar aesthetic and very specific possibilities games have to offer.

#6 & #7. Dark Angel circeled a bit, then entered My Space

You can visit her here, but she doesn't feel very talkative right now.
Let's see if her library friends want to accept her as a friend anyway...
O yes, I almost forgot, before she touched ground in MySpace, she took some rounds viewing Facebook, Hi5 (similar looking), Ning (promising, actually, if only I had more time...), and Bebo. The latter nice, clean looking, compared to MySpace, which seems to become ever seedier to a point it almost feels sticky to log in. For this exercise, thanks a bunch for the pointers!

Waiting for the next batch...

Adding some links...

#5a and #5b

In general, feeds are a great way to look at headlines, but I fail to see the wisdom in using Bloglines. To take the Blogline detour instead of adding site feeds directly to my blog only makes sense to me if I accumulate too many feeds to manage, which seems highly unlikely. Blogger allows you to control how many headlines you want displayed per feed, so you can curb the clutter right there. I suppose I can hide my feeds from public view by tucking them away on Bloglines, but since I don't have anything to hide it's still a thumbs down from me.

#5 Holy Smokes, another account!

Thank Goodness Scott's not here, I'm feeling slightly cantankerous again!

#4 Continued: Images and Copyright

Has anybody else studied the Flickr guidelines? Is anybody else asking permission first? I discussed the issue with Belinda yesterday. Let me know what you're take is, fellow library bloggers. Comment, please, that's what we have the little pencil icon for, at the end of each post, n'est-ce pas?
Lucky me & YAY, though! Cornelius wrote back already, saying that it's ok to post his photo. Thank you!

#4 Flickr: Images and Copyright

Scott is rolling his eyes. "What now, irascible German life form one desk over, what's your problem now ?!?"
Well, I'm peeved, and I need to express my peevedness. The Library makes me open accounts with all kinds of sites that I never had any inclination to open accounts with. With which I never had any... et cetera.
Scott says, "nobody's making you.. Either you want the 50 bucks, or not"
Fine! I sign up for a Yahoo account to open a flickr account to advance to step 4 of 23, which all the sudden seems a looong way to go.
I finally log on to Flickr looking for "santa cruz"
Flickr says "We found 143,046 results for photos matching santa and cruz."
Wow!
Now let's see if anybody wants to share one of the 143,046 results.
One very nice Cornelius Crab invites me to download a very pretty picture of "Santa Cruz, California looking up coast towards Natural Bridges State Beach" with a choice of file sizes. Thank you very much, Cornelius Crab, you're a true giver!
But, no, wait, not so fast, there is a little copyright icon under the photo! Grinding halt, followed by brow-furrowing &
head-scratching over truely mixed messages.

I study Flickr's FAQ and "Community Guidelines" and come to the conclusion that, although I'm invited to download, and although the photo is marked "public" it is not actually in the public domain. Flickr advises that every photo on the site is copyrighted (even without a license/"All rights reserved" at the bottom) and that the person who shot the picture is to be contacted before one can "use" it (w/o defining use). See:

http://www.flickr.com/help/photos/#87
"How can I copyright my photos?"

As the good girl I am when it comes to copyright issues I will contact Cornelius and ask permission first before I show the image here, until then click on todays title to be linked to the photo.

PS: How we could use flickr for research?
Crab man's photo could be used for a lecture on shoreline corrosion, for instance, once we have the copyright issue cleared up.

#3 Continued

Trying out blogscope I came across Tailrank.com

Tailrank seems to be an ideal site if you are looking for news from sources with different political background & bias.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Tailrank.com is a site that provides a feed of content on the World Wide Web that's being discussed across the blogosphere. The site continuously scans blogs that have been registered with it, and composes an index of "top stories" that have been cited by the various blogs it has scanned.
The focus of the site is the news items themselves, but users are also able to see snippets of the various blog citations that made the story popular.
The list of top stories changes over time; newer items are given a higher score than older items, and more popular items are given a higher score than less popular items. Items high on the list tend to be articles or posts that have triggered a lot of blog activity over the last day or so.
Because the site's index allows one to follow the spread of ideas from blog to blog, it can be considered a memetracker.

#3 Yup

Part 1: Sent off my address to become an official participant.

Part 2: Searching blogs, searching, searching...

Part 3: Here's a short report on

a) Technorati:

A fun word for a warm-up. Random, but specific keywords ("Synchronstimme") work just swell, although Technorati's instant claim of delivering "Everything in the known universe about Synchronstimme" might be slightly exaggerated. Moving on to serious searches...

As academic topic of interest I picked "Visual Resource Collection". A flood of results makes clear that I need to use the "Advanced Search" option. Unfortunately, searching for "Visual Resource Collection" as a phrase catatpults me to the opposite extreme with only two (irrelevant) hits. One person announcing that "Yesterday was my last day working for the Visual Resource Collection...," as well as another person's resume. Do we care? No.
We need to use

b) http://liszen.com/

Where a straightforward search generates a number of promising results, with the option to further finetune. Very attractive on first sight, but let me investigate more at a later point in time; I believe my 15 minutes are very much over...

#2 Check

Created blog.

#1 Done

Read the fine print.

Where's my gift cerificate?

I have to do 23 exercises first? O no! Next time, I have to remember to read the fine print first!