Microblogging

In the three+ years since librarians first started thinking about 23 Things and heading out into the wilds of Web 2.0 the biggest new things in a world of new things seem to be Facebook, of course, and Twitter. Twitter, I learned in looking for information about Tumblr, is one of many recently (relatively recently, that is) developed microblogging tools. These are web tools that allow people to broadcast small bits of information rapidly, and to aggregate, as in regular blogging, information and ideas into some kind of thematic order. So, back to Tumblr. New favorites: Officials say the darndest things. Front Pages (from the Newseum). I found these in a posting at Mashable.com. These kinds of things are exactly what keeps news and trivia junkies glued to the screen all day. Librarians like me, who like serendipity and hunting and gathering, are exactly the right audience for these kinds of aggregated information sites: small bites and most of it quite tasty.

RSS feeds and other ways of keeping up

Trying not to think of "The Feed" from Tobin Anderson's wonderful eponymous YA novel. I've added a couple of the blogs I want to keep current with to my Google homepage: Capitol Choices and MCPL's illustrious Shhhout Out blog. That's enough. It's such a huge timesink to follow even the cream of the cream of blogs, news and opinion sites, even cartoonists I like...

Fear of technology or why are your lips moving?

I have an iPod Touch I haven't touched. What a wimp, you say; I say it, too. But, as a sign that my librarian heart has not entirely turned to stone, I noticed that it gave a small leap when I found that the iPod Touch is one of the supported listening devices for NetLibrary audiobooks and for Overdrive, as well. So, great. I won't be limited to listening to Beeswing all day long. Not that I would mind.

Wiki worlds

My first experience with posting to a Wiki was related to this handout I created for the YALSA preconference in Washington D.C. in 2007 ("The Sins of YA Literature"). I could never get it into the YALSA wiki and have since felt somewhat incompetent with wikis. My second experience was with the MCPL Intranet, which inexplicably uses the term "wiki" to mean a holding place for a bunch of forms, files or other items related to...well anything on the site. Fine. Most recently the Board of Capitol Choices used Google Docs to share strategic planning ideas and information. But I love the idea of working together on a narrative or shared body of information. I'm just not sure I've found the group who will make a wiki work. In the meantime, I've added the wikihow widget to my Google homepage.

Word clouds

Here's a way to convey information quickly and appealingly: make a word cloud. I've done this with the results from a couple of SurveyMonkey surveys I did for non-profit groups. It's cool how a word cloud focuses the attention on meta-messages. A way of looking at an idea from both sides now, if you will.
This word cloud was made in Wordle, using the text of Strategic Direction 5:

The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester

The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester

Thing 6

I will remember BigHugeLabs.com—it would be nice to make a set of trading cards for a gift. Also, I found a lovely green photo of bubbles at http://krazydad.com/colrpickr/ that made me think that’s what Owen Jester would have seen underwater in Graham Pond from the rounded window of his submersible. I haven’t used Flickr or any of the other photo sites as much as I would have years ago—part of it is the time involved in getting the pix from my phone or camera onto my laptop and then onto the site. So my philosophical, probably lame, excuse is that we seem to be surrounded by photos and images, almost to the forgetting of what our own memories, fickle as they are, store for us.
While looking for inspiration, I noticed that Thing 6 for the Cambridge University Libraries 23 Things project is actually an intro to Google Calendar. I loved Google Calendar for about a year. I had different colors for sports, music lessons, my life, my family’s activities and commitments. Then…again: was I just amusing myself or really saving time? Of course, around that time my older child began to keep his own calendar, drive himself (and occasionally his brother) to lessons and sports, and my sense of complex, frantic hours faded. But in the spirit of online tool discovery, I continue to enjoy using Doodle to plan group gatherings.