Thing #13: Tagging

Aren't librarians all about helping to find relevant content for their readers? I think tagging is a great free-form way to augment the formal cataloging that goes on in libraries. People (some of them librarians) often complain that subject headings grow stale and that catalogs aren't able to keep up with how a heading evolves over time.

"Should we encourage or discourage the practice?" Participation in libraries should be rewarded, promoted, given top priority by librarians. And any tools that allow you to easily let patrons participate is a boon. Why would you want to discourage interested folks from adding to the collective consciousness? Patrons who participate will feel ownership and will help defend you from vicious and pernicious politicians when they try to take away your budget. By all means, encourage!




There's a certain fascination on my part with tag clouds that can be generated from tagging. In my mind's eye I get an image of a cloud of gnats buzzing around a book or an article with all the words associated with that item zooming in-&-out of focus or importance as readers add their thoughts to share with everyone. As Spock would say, "Fascinating!"

Thing #12: Twitter, Smitter

What is Twitter? This feels like a cartoon version of my life. The problem is no one is reading this cartoon. So I'll probably get cancelled since my syndication is only one. (Oh, what a harsh economy we're living in!) Why does this feel like babbling?

I mean do I really want to stay hyper-connected to my friends and always know what they're doing? And, of course, the reverse of that, do I want my friends to always know what I'm doing? Yeah, right. Pardon me, while I go to the bathroom. People are not sites, we don't need to connect ourselves to the electronic umbilical cord and get our sustenance from the wired teat. (Boy, that sounds painful.)

At this point, I think some choice words are in order. Bulbous, bouffant, mukluks, galoshes, gazebo. Okay, Dr. Demento fans, what song is that from? The first one to comment gets a silver star, figuratively, of course.

Thing #11: Instant Messaging

This is old stuff, not new. In the corporate environment (which is where I came from prior to my latest job in the academic world), we used IM all the time. It works best for quick questions that don't really merit an e-mail, like "Are you at your desk? Do you have a few minutes? Can I call you? Are you going to reply to my e-mail message?"

My limitations are that I just don't like using acronyms or abbreviations when I text, especially those long drawn-out ones like NALOPKT ("Not a lot of people know that"). I'm a fast typer, so no problemo for me, except when people use them in their replies to me.

Here's my Meebo account: http://meebo.com/add/LibrarianTechGuruGoddess.

Thing #10: Ning

Although I didn't open a Ning account, I searched for the word "librarians" and came across some interesting related social networks:
Library 2.0
Savvy Librarian
Book Place

Watched the intro video; definite audio problems. I like that, the profile page is "all about you". Isn't all of this social networking "all about you"?!

♫ "Scrolling, scrolling along! I love to watch the world go by..." ♫

Thing #9: More Facebook

Okay, "Never mind" as Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say after her rant...

I opened a Facebook account. It was easy and I can keep everything private. What a hoot—I discovered my 20-something nephews are on there. I've also made a friend and posted a few silly messages on my wall, as well as on his.

Not being of the Millennial generation, I'm still sort of stumped as to why everyone thinks that anyone else is so interested in what they're posting. I've been reading a lot about the phenomenon, but it's still very much a quandary to me.

A recent article gave some insightful information on this, entitled "Generation Y: We're just not that into Twitter" on cnet News (June 23, 2009).

If you're like me and looking for a way to better understand Generation Y, read this article. I'm tempted to pick up the book by the 2 Ph.D. authors that's mentioned in there, "The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement" by Twenge and Campbell.

I joined 3 groups: 1) In the Library With the Lead Pipe; 2) Libraries and Librarians; and 3) Digital Libraries. I need to cogitate some more about the fan portion...

Thing #8: Facebook

Oh, dear, this is the one thing I've been dreading. Privacy is important to me. Facebook owns any content you upload. You can pick up stalkers. Although I enjoy reading about my librarian colleagues, some of the posts I've read make my eyes bug out because they just let it all hang out.

At one of my first professional positions, I used to argue the privacy issue with one of the engineers there over and over again. He would say, "What are they going to do to you if such-&-such information becomes public?" (This was pre-Internet, ha!) I'd say, "Fire you." He'd say, "They can't do that, you could sue them for wrongful discharge." Yeah, right. An example would be disclosing you have some sort of degenerative disease. (Which I don't, but that's my concern, not anyone else's. That's the point!) Corporate management (especially in Texas) is fairly unscrupulous and they'd make up some excuse to get you off the payroll.

If only there were a benevolent moderator out there who would hide items that were too descriptive of who you are and where you work or live—it's just sad how someone can cash in on having that knowledge. I know I sound paranoid. I can't help it.

Doing thing #8 will have to wait for this weekend, when I can set up my Facebook site at home.

Thing #7: RSS Feeds

NT23 things are beginning to blur together. I played with "adding a subscription" (again) in Google Reader and also using the RSS subscribe link. Both easy and intuitive—my kind of tools! The problem with RSS integrated into Outlook is that all the feeds go directly into my RSS folders and I often forget to go read the messages. This totally defeats the purpose. Having the reader in the browser with a side window you can scroll is much, much better.

Thing #6: Blog Readers

Fantastic! This is a great way to easily manage and keep up with my subscribed blogs. The scrolling blue box and keeping track of what I've already read are such useful features of Google Reader. Using bookmarks in my browser was just not an efficient way to keep up.

This brings to mind the Dilbert cartoon where Dogbert says, "Information is gushing toward your brain like a firehose aimed at a teacup". Peter Morville had a slide with the cartoon in the "Ambient Findability" presentation he gave at one of the Vision Sessions at NASIG's annual conference this year.

Water, water everywhere...information, information everywhere...

"A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention."
—Herbert Simon, Nobel Laureate Economist

Thing #5: Image Generators

I'm taking a very helpful group workshop for NT23 Things #3 through #5. I've generated a cartoon image:


I also tried Image Chef and it's oh so easy to use! One of my loosing campaigns here out at the Annex:

Thing #4: More Flickr

I tried "Spell with Flickr" and that was trés amusant!

Thing #3: Flickr

It sure feels redundant opening yet another e-mail account, this time on Yahoo! Did it anyway, and opened the Flickr account as well, but I don't have a camera here at work, so I've uploaded the image of an open book. This is ironic, since I'm being extremely private about this whole North Texas 23 things effort and am specifically not posting any information that is indicative of my job, life, and particulars, beyond commonalities.

Obviously, I don't get the whole social networking thing. I'm just a troglodyte.

Hey, has anyone tried the new search from MSN, called Bing? There's a gorgeous photo of a desert with colorful hot-air balloons on the homepage and you can roll your mouse over the landscape to get little pop-up windows with interesting trivia, here and there all around. I particularly like the image search. Try "librarian" and you get some primo quality images, plus as you scroll down the page you get more-&-more hits, rather than having to keep hitting "page forward". Lots of nice, thoughtful features. Pretty cool.

I know thing #3 is about Flickr, but I figure blogging is a great way to share new stuff and this is an image source!