Thing 23--The Meaning of It All

Well, that's that. Things are looked at and commented on. Now we must blog about the meaning of it all. Is there one? I took the break week off to consider that, and I am not sure there is. The Things are all about the medium and not the message, and with due respect to R. Buckminster Fuller, the message is more important than the medium. Some may be driven by the desire to use new data diffusion tools to broaden our patron community. This should be encouraged because libraries are reliable sources for information, and if we can use some techie wonder to entice them to our websites and our buildings, how bad can that be?

Some Things have applications in-house. In a multi-branch library, many scheduling problems could be eliminated when a general staff meeting was held by recording it and letting shift workers watch it later in a podcast. People who didn't get all of what was said could revisit the session, and appropriate information could be provided so staff could ask follow-up questions. Other things like wikis and blogs have their uses, provided that they are kept current. There is no more excuse for dead links on a feature than there is for a mildewed book on a shelf. If a library's administration is sincere about technology, they need to spend the money to keep current. They should also collect usage statistics in order to decide which things are working for their patrons and which aren't, and letting the things that don't go away.

I've gotten some flak about wanting to regress to some glorious pre-tech age, mostly from people who assume that I'm against anything invented after the lever. This is nonsense. I am against the uncritical acceptance of everything that comes down the pike. I'm against the gadget envy that seems to afflict top administrators and their IT department heads. The director of Mallville PL would rather die than see Outlet City PL be a first adopter of the Next Big Thing and vice versa. Therefore their staffs often have the dubious joy of not only having to deal with an unproven and often unhelpful technology but they get to explain it to the patrons whom it has made unhappy. Oh, would I love it if those who say 'make it so' and wander off had to stay and make it work! At least Capt. Picard was wiling to get his hands dirty.

Let's not go overboard in any direction. After all, the technology that works in one community is a failure just down the Interstate, the same way that one library's best-seller is another's doorstop. Let's look at the various technical possibilities, experiment, and use the ones that work for our particular library and let the rest go. After all, there is more stuff coming along in a minute, and it might be something that would work well in our shop--and if not ours maybe in yours.

Farewell, gentle bloggers. I will soon diminish, go into the West, and remain Technoskeptic. And the blog will go away as soon as the technique can be mastered. It was fun while it lasted.

Thing 22--Staying Current

It is so sweet that 23 Things thinks that decisions on the addition of gadgets, widgets, and other -ets are driven by working librarians and paraprofessionals, so we must know every new thing that comes along. If only it were true. These choices are made away from the service desks, so it's not that necessary for front-line staff to be au courant with every New Thing. We're going to get what the higher levels want, and we'll learn enough of that to help patrons until the Next Big Thing comes along, whether it's Thing 24 or 124. Whether it works, whether anybody wants it, or whether anyone uses it is irrelevant. It is a system that has held since the memory of the bibliothecarius was replaced by a bound MS volume because the monk in charge of the scriptorium wanted to bug the one from the monastery over the hill and it won't change any time soon.

One pays a certain amount of attention to what is passing through the journals or on news sites, but it's not a good idea to assume that even if something looks useful, we'll get it because it has to be noticed by the journals first. Ironically, technical novelties, like slang, once they have been around long enough to be noticed by administrators, are frequently no longer novelties, having become either established techniques or hopelessly vieux jeux.

Thing 21--Sudent 2.0 Tools

For the overachiever, these will be a wonder, replacing all sorts of schedule books and timelines posted on the walls of one's room, illegible notes scribbled on syllabi, and various calendric devices. If instructors go with the bit for them and librarians/libraries are brought into the picture, they have possibilities. Of course, those of us who have tried to help a student who was assured that 'every' library has a particular title the teacher demands be used might be a wee bit skeptical that the same instructors who didn't bother to check if we did are going to bother with anything else. I am wicked enough that I get a kick out of telling a kid where teach got it wrong. I always counsel silence with the pedagogue but to treasure this little bit of knowledge as a moment of superiority. The Homework Mommy will adore these, as it will make doing her kid's homework a lot simpler. If you are a working librarian you know this. If you are an administrator, academic or technophile, you will just have to take it on faith.

For those comfortable with a computerized schedule, this is a good thing. For those on another path, it is something that might come in handy some day.

Note on the cartoon: I am up to 21 and still utterly lacking in glam. At the end of 23 if I am still me, I cannot decide whether to sue for false advertising or simply diminish, go into the West, and remain Technoskeptic.

Thing 20--Books 2.0

There were over 50 sites suggested for examination. I don't do 50 of anything, so I dipped in here and there. Some made no sense, like the 'future of the book,' link, and the rest of the articles seemed to suggest we might as well burn all books now as they were as dead as the dodo. I dunno. The puff video on Kindle didn't answer the question, 'how much is that in dollars?' I admit to blowing off the telephone stuff as I have a cheap cell and no features. Several of the book sites wanted you to sign up before you looked at their stuff. No way. Others, like Book Trails probably have possibilities if you have the patience to read through all the commentary, and I don't. I have been using KDL's What's Next for years and swear by and not at it. Who would ever pay $2 per book stumper with Fiction-L and Project Wombat at one's disposal? I subscribe to both and recommend them without reservation. Online book groups and 'communities' do nothing for me. Reading a book is between the author and the reader, and letting other people in does for that relationship what Princess Diana said her husband's mistress did for her marriage--makes it a bit crowded. No, thank you. By the time I got to audio books and lit crit, I gave up with a headache and crossed eyes.

Will the computer destroy the book? I doubt it. It's too handy and requires very little effort to use. Will other formats become part of the world of the book? I certainly hope so. The recorded book, LP format, etc., certainly didn't do the plain-vanilla book any harm. If the computer and its associated technologies make it possible for more people to have access to information for both entertainment and practical use, that's fine with me. I will continue to prefer the Mark 1 carbon-based book because it can be toted and read almost anywhere with no auxiliary technological needs. But that's me. There are others like me out there, and there are others who are more comfortable with devices. Let's leave it to the readers what formats are available. The book can stand many formats.

Late-breaking observation: Interesting cartoon. I, alas, am still old, fat, homely, and dowdy. Perhaps when I have done all 23 things I will become gorgeous. Or perhaps my lack of faith will doom me to remain myself. This prospect does not devastate me.

Thing 19--Other Social Networks

Gather has a certain refreshing honesty in proclaiming it wants to bring publishers and people together. I wonder how many Gather posts booming a title originated in a corporate office not in a booklover's head? However, as long as it's all screen names and personae, we'll never know, will we? I looked at some sites that say they are interested in things I'm interested in, and they were OK, a little heavy on the feedback and a little light on the content, but aside from my concerns about stealth commercialism, not bad. However my reservations expressed previously still apply. People who function well in groups will probably love these. Those who function better alone won't. One can only hope that libraries and their administrators will recognise the difference in operating style and let the staff member choose how a task will be done and what tools will be used.

I am not group-oriented, so I doubt I'll ever use any of these sites, but it is useful to know that they exist.

Late-breaking news. I see on the BBC this morning that the UK government wants to monitor social networking sites for gang-related activities and terrorists. Read it for yourself: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7962631.stm And what happens on their side of the pond could happen tomorrow on ours--or maybe already is. Consider that next time you become somebody's "friend"--you may get some nasty guilt by association by someone who gets his information on due process from Kiefer Sutherland's writers.

Thing 18--MySpace and Facebook

I was surprised to find that I had a Facebook page until I remembered getting notices from a couple of people I know slightly that they wanted me to be their 'friend'. Since none of this required me to shoulder the burdens of a real friendship, why not? If I get excessive e-mail from anybody, he or she gets on my spam list and vanishes into the aether anyway. It was the first time I'd been on it since these people invited me, and may be the last. I am not that interested in developing online relationships with people I don't know from a hole in the ground and probably wouldn't want to know in person.

Mr. Perkiness from Commoncraft assures us that this is all networking and very valuable stuff, which will get you anything from a good job to a new house to a hot date. Maybe and maybe not. It will also allow collective wisdom to be combined for the Greater Good. Maybe and maybe not, because a lot of the 'wall' stuff I looked at was inane and uninformative. I find listservs function better for that sort of thing, but if others prefer this way, that's fine with me. It's more a matter of style than substance, and people should be free to have their own style.

Any of this useful for libraries? Looks as if some libraries have one or both kinds of pages, so it must be working for them. If they bring people into the building or bring them to databases or other library services, and the library keeps the pages current, they've served their purpose. If they aren't kept current, they're useless, but anything that isn't kept current is useless, whether it's on paper or online.

Inter-Thing Observations 2

I've gotten static about my 'attitude' towards the Things. Nobody has actually ordered me to embrace them without reservation, but it's tending that way. This is not going to happen. Some things, like podcasts, wikis, and YouTube have interesting possibilities, as does instant messaging. From what I have seen of the Things to date, some libraries have taken commercial products designed for individuals and cleverly adapted them to library purposes. If it works for them and their patrons, I am all for it.

Now for the reservations. A lot of these Things are .com, which means that a commercial entity is involved. Despite the Google motto of 'don't be evil' which has been adopted by other services, I worry. Google, after all, is complicit in internet censorship in China, possibly elsewhere. All of these .coms collect sign-up data which they supply to their advertisers, even if they don't supply individual information. Do we want our patrons' information collected? Remember how contributions to NPR dropped after it was discovered they were selling mailing lists? Do we want this to happen to libraries? Has anybody explored whether any of this violates library confidentiality statutes? Do we want to find out the hard way when some library is sued out of existence because of .com collaboration?

I have reservations about posting library historical collections on Flickr, and I don't care if LC or Smithsonian are doing it Can you imagine the flap if somebody donated a collection of historical photos including well-loved kin, and that person saw the inane and sometimes unpleasant comments that get posted? Historical photographs donated to a library should be properly cataloged and posted on its website not just posted. Having said that, I do think that it would be a great place to solicit identifications. You'd have to read through a lot of 'weird hat, dude,' profanities, and irrelevancies, but you might find some answers. However, if you already have the ID, for goodness' sake, catalog the pictures, and if you don't have a historical photographs section on your website, get one. And find some secure physical storage for the originals.

Twitter may even have its possibilities, but anybody who read Doonesbury for the first two weeks of March when Roland Hedley III Twittered himself on-camera rather than reporting his story might conclude that it is exclusively the province of the self-involved twit (and yes, I wrote that intentionally). I rarely even have my cell on my person let alone turned on, so a library tweet would never catch me. It might catch those who do twittering, though.

I won't be silly enough to say that any of this is just a passing fad and would never work. I say that an uncritical embrace of anything is a bad idea. After Library 2.0, there's 2.1, ad infinitum. Find the things that work in your community, invest in those, be aware of the rest, and don't let yourself be hustled into anything.

Message to my surrealists: You are the weirdest of the weird, and I am proud of you.

Thing 17--Podcasts

Again, I am underwhelmed. Why? Well, I wandered around a couple podcast sites, and tried searching a few topics I'm interested in. 'Chocolate' for instance got me a ton of links to sites that were either selling it, selling franchises a la Amway, or selling equipment about it, and the annotations were so cryptic, that nobody could tell. I found a video podcast about, it said, Duck a l'orange, but it ate up so much bandwith loading that I gave up. I can do better on paper in 641.5944. An audio on agnosticism would have been wonderful if it didn't want so much bandwith that it sputtered like a dirty CD. I can do better in the 211s. For something that is promoted as a freebie, I ran into a lot that wanted upfront money to click in, especially music, and an awful lot that were commercial productions. So much for productions of the masses, although the amateurishness of a lot of the ones I eyeballed suggested they were indeed of the masses. Some were awfully slick, though. Perhaps they were like those Committees for the Prevention and Furtherance of Things that sponsor initiatives purporting to spring from the local community and upon closer examination turn out to be funded by somebody from somewhere else with deep pockets and a cause. Many wanted you to subscribe before listening, and frankly I get enough crackpot e-mail for enlarging body parts I don't own, acquiring a real estate empire, or outfoxing the Nigerian finance authorities simply by having an e-mail address, thank you. Oh, and did we mention the ads on the pages? More ads than content--although the ads may be the true content.

I wasn't particularly interested and certainly not inspired to inflict my wisdom on the masses. However, perhaps a program, speaker, or other presentation that a library put on that it recorded and was particularly pleased with might have a use, just as observed in my previous post.

Thing 16--YouTube

Ah, YouTube, the repository of wonders, weirdness, and egotism that makes me look self-effacing. You can see The Last Lecture, cheap porn, concerts, old TV, and an infinite inanity of self-display that reminds me of the adage about fools' names and fools' faces being seen in public places. Obviously the people who strut their stuff here never heard that one and never had that talk with Mom about not telling the whole world your business. There are also artistes manques who couldn't get a contract with a record company, a gallery show, or a movie role with blackmail and unlimited access to controlled substances at their disposal. Perhaps this will be enough to keep them from making a nuisance of themselves to the rest of the world. Perhaps this will save the rest of us from having to imperil our souls by lying about liking whatever their particular Art is.

Having said that, I can see where a video presence might be useful for a library, besides the in-group jokes we make about patrons and the Visual Tours. Got a first-rate book-talker? If you've got the tools, record some talks and post them. Record other presentations, and if they went over well, or you're really proud of them, post them. You can edit out the sight of all the empty chairs when 8 people showed up and you thought it would be 80. Fortunately, YouTube does not require strict veracity.

Thing 15--Rollyo

I am underwhelmed. I visited the sample site to look for a public domain e-book, and lo, and behold what were the top 2 entries? Items from Amazon. Didn't get to Project Gutenberg until later. A book I know is rare wasn't even listed, and the quote page started with a couple commercial sites that weren't even quotation sites. Even the non-starter had an ad for 'free' downloads. After looking at their 'about' page, I could see that they have an active PR machine, with a real gift for archiving complimentary quotes from celebrities--didn't see any librarians quoted, but a lot of glitterati, political chatterers, and similar members of the fab and fribble. I can't imagine needing to bother with yet another account to keep track of my preferred websites. One can create favorites lists in both IE and Firefox, the most common at-work browsers, which you can keep on a jump drive if you somehow feel the need to answer reference questions while on vacation.

It is another .com site to which we are encouraged to entrust information on our work and our patrons that is probably covered under most states' library confidentiality laws. This is another freebie that could get us into a lot of trouble somewhere down the road.

14--Online Productivity Tools

Do people HAVE lives that are so complicated they have to use stuff like this? And if they do, don't they have any worries that a whole lot of their personal and professional information is in the hands of .com sites? You can't tell me that they aren't going to use that data to their profit sometime, somehow. The countdown clock is a perfect example. Before you get to the how-t0, you have to sign up on a dating site. No, thank you. I'd prefer to talk to somebody in our computer group. They would be able to find me something that wouldn't merrily download viruses and goodness knows what else into our system and add insult to injury with tracking cookies.

I can't think of a single way any of these would be of any use to me personally or professionally. I have a calendar on my desk where I have appointments, vacations, and projects marked out, and a cheap notebook calendar in my purse that has the same things marked out, and they do everything I need them to do. I haven't had to learn any new programs, to clutter my mind with any more passwords and usernames, or to give personal or professional information to a total stranger who may not be quite nice.

I am not sure whether these tools really improve productivity or merely create the impression of busyiness, which to some people is the same thing. If others feel the need, that's fine with me, but I don't. I measure productivity by the quality and quantity of output not by the clutter of a calendar.

Thing 13--Library Thing

I don't get the attraction. Even with my monumental ego, I don't delude myself that my views on any given title are interesting to anyone but me. And yes I do RA, and yes I recommend books, sometimes ones I've read and sometimes ones I wouldn't read on a bet. Also, the idea of some utter stranger having right to look at my list and comment my taste offends me. The day I walked out of my last literature class was the last day anybody on the planet had any right to an opinion about my reading. I am not any more interested in others' opinions of my reading than they are in mine about theirs. And in this day and age of governmental, religious, political, and commercial snoops, I would be quite content not to have any more long noses examining my stuff.

Has anybody noticed how many of these 2.0 things end in .com? Somewhere, somehow, data is being collected, mined, exchanged, or otherwise turned to a profit without our knowledge or consent or advantage. We will be marketed to under the guise of somebody who is pretending to be a librarian or booklover. I have no need of being marketed to. I know what I want, and I will go and get it at my friendly neighborhood independent bookstore until it is crushed by the big boxes.

Having said this, I can think of one library use, but only if a patron was willing. I pull for a number of homebound people, and I don't like duplicating my pulls any more than they like having to put up with them. If a homebound person wanted to create a profile and permit the homebound crew to look a it, that would be helpful. Other than that, if someone wants to keep a list of what has been read, a card file or a notebook would be easier and more private. Me, I keep mine in my head, where it belongs.

Thing 12--Wikis

They have their uses, although why 4 people planning a camping trip would go to all the bother of a wiki in the manner described by that insufferable perk on Common Craft is beyond me. E-mail is not THAT exhausting, for goodness' sake. Now, if there were 40 people, a wiki might be useful, provided there was a Supreme Wikier to keep track of who promised what. Still a wiki has its uses for bulk information provision, and some of the links provided were interesting, although within the wikis some hadn't been updated recently, and some links were dead. That's the problem with cooperative wonders: Unless you have a resident bossy-pants who appoints him- or herself to check everybody's work to see that it meets the B-P's standards, people lose interest, leave the job, or otherwise don't keep things up.

Our shop tinkered with a wiki a while back to consolidate our ready-reference file, and I participated. The basics were technoskeptic resistant. However bells and whistles, even links, at that time required code fiddling, that had our tech person's eyes crossed. There were no how-to links on the wiki at the time, and a query to the online support group brought some awfully technical stuff that I couldn't understand, let alone implement. If the wiki sites have improved their how-tos, wikis have possibilities for all sorts of applications as some libraries have discovered.

What do I think of some instructors' refusal to accept Wikipedia as a resource? Three resounding cheers is what. Since Wikipedia has anonymous posts and is resistant to fact-checking there is no way of finding out who posted, what that person's knowledge of the subject is, and why that post was made. I remember that until there was some strong hint of legal action, Wikipedia wouldn't correct some entries made about John Kerry by Republican activists. I wouldn't bet against Democratic activists doing the same sort of thing to Republicans. Wikipedia lacks transparency in its postings, so its information has to be suspect. I'll use it for quick-and-dirty, and for things that there is no profit, either financial or emotional, for a corrupt poster. Librarians should champion transparency of authorship and quality of information, and right now Wikipedia is not there. Wikipedia needs a resident bossy-pants before it can be anything but a quick-and-dirty resource.

Thing 11--Social Media

Does it bother anyone besides me that one of the principal selling points of all of these things is their unedited nature? By golly, in the true spirit of the American frontier, nobody is going to tell the social mediocrity what's a fact and what isn't. Not that editors are perfect, as the editors at New Republic who believed Stephen Glass could testify. They do try, and some places even have fact-checkers. Of course, with corporate media cutting back, practical things like facts don't have the value they once did. Opinions and attitude are much more important, which explains the prosperity of a number of people who should be belted across the chops rather than paid extravagantly for badly-written books and vulgar TV and radio programs.

As a librarian I have spent my professional life trying to find the most accurate, most useful information for people, information that I believed came from a dependable source and I could in conscience provide to people who needed it. Now I find that the musings of anybody with computer access count as information. Those faceless multitudes with their screen names and outright ignorance are to be trusted without question because this is democratic information. Twaddle! We don't know who they are, what their qualifications might be, or who's paying them. The voice of the people may as the Latin would have it be the voice of God, but it is frequently the voice a lot of people talking rot.

If people want to enter into a shouting match or even a civil discussion in social media about Angelina Jolie's favorite tablecloth or the True Meaning of whatever is the hot topic of the moment, then by all means let them do so. There are worse things they could be doing. There is not a lot new here, you know. Blithering idiots have taken scraps from the news and turned them into something to astound the weak minds of the Great Unwashed forever. This just uses a computer. The inanity and ignorance do not change, merely the way of inflicting it on others.

Thing 10--Social Bookmarking

People must have a lot more bookmarks than I do if they feel the need to commit them to a commercial service and put tags on them. I doubt if I've got 30 bookmarked on the busiest computer I use, and I know why I have them. When I travel, I only need one and can google everything else I want. I don't have enough to make going to one more place to collect cookies on me worth the bother, but if people do, I don't see why they shouldn't. I sampled a few libraries' bookmarks to the delicious site (YOU figure out all the dots and capitalizations), and many of the links were dead. And this is useful how?

I've never worked in a group where that much information is necessary that couldn't be found easily, without yet another layer of fuss and bother, but if a working group thinks it needs delicious, OK by me. If a library wants to use it to manage its links to the good stuff, assuming somebody actually checks on it from time to time to prune dead links, OK by me. It just seems like adding another layer of work to me, and I'm against that.

Inter-Thing Observations

I took this week to observe the real world of the public service floor and sample some of the comments in some of the blogs, and the disconnect has been amazing. Not the surreal blogs--and you know who you are--but the serious, earnest folks who think that the 23 Things and Library 2.0 are the answer to everything library. To quote that profound philosopher Sportin' Life: It ain't necessarily so.

Library 2.0 presupposes easy anytime access to computers and associated devices, computer skills, functional literacy, among other things. These are mostly the province of the middle class and those determined to join it. Come and visit any big-city--or even medium city--downtown library and get a look at those who are too poor to own a device, too ill-educated to apply for unemployment online, or a combination of both. All the goodies I've seen so far will do nothing for these people because they are not in a place where they can use them, and they may have more need for connection than most of my brother and sister bourgeois do.

Library 2.0 has an infrastructure problem besides the usual problems with connectivity, hardware, software, and malware. It has a human infrastructure problem that is being ignored. Unless and until the quality of education for the entire population improves, and people have both the income and leisure time to devote to acquiring and using devices the whole thing is going create another society of have-nots--technological this time. We can promote the tech all we want, but until people have both the education and the means to use it, it is going to be just another middle-class indulgence.

Thing 9--Sharing

It's not that I'm not interested in sharing, but I don't have any pictures on Flickr or anywhere else to fiddle with. If I did photographs, I wouldn't post them, because I wouldn't want to bore people. And let's face it, the only thing more boring that one's own vacation pictures is everybody else's. Having said that, I can see where some of these things might have their uses for the things that are mentioned. It's handy to know they exist in case one can think of something to use tools like these. This is where having designated staff with both public service experience and technical skills are handy. Were I to have an inspiration, I could get in touch with one of these people and explain the kind of information I'd like to display. They could advise me on a tool that, at least in my case, is technoskeptic-proof and would display the information to its best advantage. It wouldn't be all that different from the colleagues we pester now when we get queries outside our areas of expertise, from genealogy to business to goodness knows what. Sometimes the Mark 1 Carbon-Based Interface is the best tool of all.

Thing 8--Communication Web 2.0 Style

Where to begin? So much technique, so little content. Having participated in Florida's ask a librarian program, I can see where instant messging has its uses. It's not all that much different from an in-person reference transaction except that the librarian can't plead laryngitis. How about reserve notices, overdue notices, and anouncements of a cancelled program to those who have signed up for it? Sometimes even the most extreme technophiliac has to come to the physical library--but if the event will not materialize, why send the poor soul out into the flesh-and-blood world without a purpose? Those live people are so non-tech. Me, personally, the idea of letting people disturb my train of thought every 15 seconds or less with some Instant Message that Absolutely Positively Can't Wait and turns out to be something that not only could wait but should never have been sent horrifies me.

Web conferencing is like the little girl with the little curl--when it is bad it is horrid, and I've had some real horrors inflicted on me. There's a tiny bit in one of the 'what is it' pieces that mentions that a lot of things have to come together to make things work--the presenter's skills, the sending organization's software and hardware, the receiving end's software and hardware plus places for people to participate in the web conference undistracted. That's a lot of stuff that has to come into harmony, and it doesn't often. When the administrative agencies stop exulting over how much travel money they're saving, they'd better run a total on hardware and software upgrades and a web conferencing room. Plus upkeep. Otherwise staff time is being wasted, staff nerves are being frayed, and staff willingness to do web conferencing declines.

Ah, Twitter, Instant Messaging on steroids and inanity! Once again, it provides those whose true communication is with their keyboards the illusion of being in touch with people without having to actually deal with a real person. If a library can figure out how to provide actual information service with it, then by all means, let them do so, but let's not delude ourselves that this is a way to provide high-quality information, a taste of it perhaps, but not the good stuff.

Some of these technologies have some promise for information provision at various levels of use, but the uncritical adoption of all of them is dangerous and expensive. Remember 8-tracks? Betamax? The list of This Is Absolutely IT technologies that have fallen out of fashion, have been superceded by something newer and occasionally better, or just wandered out into the aether to contribute to entropy is endless. Let us consider what we do, whether a particular technology will help us do it better, and whether we should just pat the technophile who is singing its praises on the head and wait for the fit to pass.

7-Image Generators

I suppose if they came with instructions, those of us who are non-technological who could use a picture somewhere might find them useful. A link to a quick-and-dirty how-to for the non tech prominently displayed would be very handy. I don't need any flash and dash on a blog that's going away when the 23 Things are over.

6 Flickr Mashups

Where DO Internettists GET these ugly words? Mashup sounds like something a toddler does to its vegetables. I can see where it could be useful to a library's PR department because they add flash and dash to mere pictures and can be done on the cheap, a real advantage in this economy. If gets the masses in the building, online, or connecting to a database or something, that's all to the good. I'm also sure businesses could make use of the F&D to drag in a few more customers. The personal ones remind me of scrapbooking--the pictures and family memorabilia become secondary to the F&D. Since librarians are about the quality and ease of use of content, the F&D must be judiciously used or they will interfere with the content. I like the injunction on one of those sites to go and play. Well, if you know the rules of manipulating code, that's just ducky. If you just want something to do something, there are no ducks in the room. Still, for people who are interested enough to fiddle around with code, have the time, and have more patience with opaque instructions and technophiliac rah-rah than I do, it is has interesting possibilities.

Thing 5--Flickr, etc.

OK, my mother would have loved this, being one of the people who made Eastman Kodak profitable for so many years. Me, I haven't owned a camera in 20 years and haven't looked at most of the ones she took of me in that long. Having said that, I can see where this might have some value for a library. There are the PR photos that get taken, cute kid stuff, and archival stuff that gets accumulated. Scanning that into Flickr might be a way to get some stuff identified, assuming anonymous posters know what they're talking about. Which they do sometimes. If there is a way to eliminate snarky and generally irrelevant comments, that would be a good thing.

I've tried downloading a particular picture following the directions as required by NEFLIN, and it won't work. The computer just beeps at me. If I work out how to do it, I'll add it in later.

Thing 4

Sorry, NEFLIN for not numbering my posts. I will strive to be less inconvenient. These news mining operations have their uses. In practical library terms one would be updating programming information. The connected could crank up the device and find out that Toddler Time had been cancelled or the yoga instructor could not be untangled from an asana and not waste time getting dressed and dealing with parking. This is not a bad thing in a time-pressed age and might cut down on the number of patron complaints. Library Board minutes could be made publicly available quickly, etc. For myself, I don't know. As may be observed elsewhere, I don't trust blogs. I want to know who those people are who are clicking away so authoritatively. Do they know what they are talking about or are they merely talking rot in an authoritative manner? Anybody who's googled anything to try to get a solid answer for a patron knows that there are many authoritative-sounding sites that are quackery, fraud, or crackpottery even worse than talk radio. Lots of the latter are blogs. As far as aggregating news sites, I don't find it necessary at the moment. I visit several daily, and have them bookmarked. I know what I want out of them and where it is, even when the front office has decreed a layout change. The thought of being chased around by several giant news organisations gives me the vapors. It's nice to know that if I ever wanted to, there's a fairly simple way of doing it.

A thought: Has anyone noticed on these things how easy it is to get into them and how hard to get out? Listservs generally have a message that tells you how to unsubscribe, but I haven't seen any easy way out of RSS or other feeds. Or for that matter a blog.

Blog is a perfectly hideous word. Oh, it's all very democratic to hear the thoughts of everybody on the planet who can click a keyboard, but it's mostly a crashing bore. Most people, including your obedient servant, are simply not that interesting and have few ideas worth hearing. However, I am commanded to express myself on Technorati and One Other Blog Searcher, so here goes. Either is simple to use, but since the basic search is by keyword, you can get almost anything. 'Reader's advisory' got me some library stuff but also wildfire warnings for something's reader. And who knows who the people are who post these things? Do they know what they are talking about? Are they worth the attention?

Praise of 2.0

The presenters treated 2.0 like praise singers treat the monarchs they serve. Perhaps it is the enthusiasm of the recent convert. It would have been interesting to hear some potential downsides to compare and contrast so one could make a more rational assessment of the phenomenon. Uncritical acceptance seems to be the order of the day.

Let us rejoice that now librarianism is seeking 'relevance.' The working public librarian has never been and will never be irrelevant, no matter what Technophilia, Academia, and Administrivia say. We answer questions, show how to manipulate information resources, and listen to patrons. What we require are tools that will allow us to assist people in finding the information they need and evaluating the various resources available now and in future.

And spare us the 'play around with it' nonsense. Show us how, using either instruction or tutorials staff. Don't blither about 'finding time.' Schedule off-desk or off-the-floor time where staff know they have a block of time dedicated to surveys of the various bits of gadgetry.

2.0 has possibilities and its moments, but in the end the purpose of libraries has always been the provision of dependable information in a timely manner. 2.0 is a collection of techniques devoid of content. The expansion of access to information is going to include access to a lot of stuff that is, to be kind about it, twaddle. Unless 2.0 addresses the question of information evaluation, it is not going to be nearly as wonderful as it has been presented.

Techoskeptic

Well, the boss said make one, so I did. The instructions are less abstruse than most, which is something. Alas, dear world, you may have to hear more from me about dealing with librarianism's newest fad, the 23 things. I am truly sorry.