So, finally, I'm all digital and bookish and everything.

I've done it--I've taken that last step into the early twenty-first century--I've downloaded an audiobook.  (Vital Friends from NetLibrary.)  Now, I freely admit, I'm a codger.  A curmudgeon.  An old gaffer.  And I like stuff I can carry around and handle (and lose and break, of course).  Books, the print-on-paper kind.  Radios with dials.  Tapes.  CDs.  Better yet, LPs!  But--this is pretty neat.  Figuratively and literally.  I'm listening at my computer and thinking, You know, it might not be so bad to have one of those little MP3 players.

So ... I guess I can jump into the raffle, yes?

Del.icio.us!

After struggling with browser bookmarks for a long time (I use one computer at work and another at home! I can't always get to my favorite browser! And what do I do when I'm at a computer in a library I'm visiting?), I learned, somewhere, about Del.icio.us.  (And I learned to use it, after a fashion, a long time before I could remember where to put those dots.)  Personally, I think its first-place showing in the Bookmarking category was well deserved--and I haven't even explored the whole social side of it.

What I like:  I am independent of any one computer, any one browser, any one anything, except for my own personal memory that, so far, supplies my Del.icio.us username and password when needed.  (In connection with this, I will divulge a little slip of the mental cogs--not my first, nor, alas, my last--wait--what were we talking about again?  Oh yes.  I have to admit I had the thought, "Okay, this seems great, but what if my internet connection is down?"  But I'll say in my defense, I did remember before too long that the purpose of a bookmarking tool is to mark--wait for it!--internet resources.  So my trusty, unwieldy, ill-maintained Opera bookmark file, in the event of a giant hairball in the internet tubes, would be just about as useful as Del.icio.us, except that it would let me look at the names of all the sites I couldn't get to.  Duh.)

What is taking some getting used to:  Tags, rather than a file structure, as a way to access my content.  I'm a librarian!  Not only a librarian, but a cataloger!  I want--I need--I demand hierarchical ordering and a controlled vocabulary!  Well, there are a couple of answers to that.  One is that my Opera bookmarks--at least as I used them--gave me no searchable subject terms at all.  Another is that I can "control" my own vocabulary to some extent, and I do, in fact, construct my tags with an eye to, and sometimes in line with, LC Subject Headings terminology.  (Though that brings up other questions.  Am I limiting the usefulness of my tags if I follow different conventions than most Del.icio.us users--by putting nouns in the plural for instance, LCSH-style, rather than the singular?)  And still another point is that I can, in fact, create a hierarchy of sorts by grouping my tags.

I think Del.icio.us, or something similar, might find some very interesting and creative uses in libraries.  Libraries have created bibliographies, reading guides, bookmarks, and pathfinders for years.  What is Del.icio.us but a Web-based electronic version of these?  And if ITPLD, for example, can join the social worlds of MySpace and Facebook, why not the social world of Del.icio.us?

Mr. Dewey Discovers the YouTubes

Well, of course I couldn't resist Cookie Monster in the library.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJlkplvYdgA

Interesting bit of dialogue.  "We only have books here.  ... Just books!! No cookies!!"  Not exactly meeting the patrons where they are.  Maybe Betty Glover, back in 1987 ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k8BKX2eQ0Q

did more than we give her credit for to start shaking things up.  A process we ToneDefs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbLPJuzFVck

are happy to continue.

Cast those pods!

Good for Kankakee Public Library!  I started out by listening to the Junior High Poetry Slam and was impressed by the level of engagement that the moderator got from participants and audience alike.  Junor high kids?  Not an easy audience, but what warmth, thoughtfulness and energy when you do manage to make the connection.

Some of us are old enough to remember predictions of the death of radio.  So much for that, right?  Radio changed, certainly, not necessarily for the better in every instance, but it's very much with us, isn't it?  We are human beings, whose very humanity has been forged from the dawn of our species in the crucible of spoken language.  Podcasting, it seems to me, can tap into the power of that ancient connection the way radio does.  I wonder, are our patrons interested in spoken poetry?  Storytelling?  How about performances of local musicians such as Encore or the Buffalo Grove Symphonic Band?  Or maybe, lively but civil debates during political campaigns?

The Wikification of Everything!

Well, maybe not everything.  But I do think wikis are part of a kind of cognitive shift from a "consult-the-authorities" model to a more collaborative approach to knowledge.  Is this good or bad?  In a word, yes.  And no, too.

I use Wikipedia fairly often:

--to do a quick look-up on a new term or topic, or refresh my knowledge of something I (should) already know

--in authority work, to find out for example when and where a person was born, or what specific genre of music a performer is identified with

--to get a general sense of a new field of knowledge.

What I don't use Wikipedia for is authoritative knowledge.  Because of its collaborative, anyone-can-change-it nature, Wikipedia is much lighter on its feet than, say, Britannica, but also less reliable.  What I would hope is that we navigators in the sea of knowledge can learn to synthesize the open-ended, democratic wiki dynamic with the older virtues of recognized authority and independent corroboration of facts.  Interestingly enough, when I have occasion on AskAway to caution a student that Wikipedia can't be used as an authoritative source in a paper, they have all, so far, assured me that they know this already.

I've been working on a Materials Division wiki for some time.  I think it's got a lot of potential for collecting the knowledge (procedures, policies, problem-solving ideas, history) that an organization runs on.  What I've discovered so far is that, first of all, it's much more of a challenge to master the technicalities of running a wiki than you might think.  This might be particularly true of the free platforms such as basic PBWiki.  There is a discussion forum that can be useful, but maybe it's a generational thing, or maybe it comes of decades of car maintenance, assembling stuff, and (very low-level) handimannery--I want a manual, darn it!  But too bad, with PBWiki you don't get one!  Another element that needs some attention is organizing your editorial crew and getting some buy-in, otherwise you are just maintaining a cumbersome blog.

You know--speaking of would-be do-it-yourselfization--I wonder if a library might organize a wiki or a set of wikis on topics like gardening, vehicle maintenance, home maintenance, and cooking?  I think the commitment of library staff knowlegeable in these areas--or at least knowledgeable about the library's resources in these areas--would be needed, but I could see a lively and fruitful interplay developing, as well as maybe a very valuable knowledge base, from the synergy between library resources and the knowledge and experience that is out there in our community.

A Flickr of Hope

I found it's actually quite simple to set up a Flickr account from an existing Yahoo account.  (And who doesn't have one of those?)  What is harder is keeping a Flickr collection lively without a digital camera ... there's only so much you can do with pictures sent by friends and culled (after vetting for copyright issues) from the Web.  So much for the perils of geezerhood.

One thing I notice on our ITPLD account: lots of pictures of events; no comments.  Is this normal?  To be expected?  I don't know.  Some people seem to use Flickr as a kind of illustrated social space--maybe that works best with a circle of people who already know each other, in person or on the Web.  Is that a direction we would want to explore?

One thing I have not yet been able to get working--or even find--is Flickr's "Blog This" feature.  I'll keep trying.  I get the feeling that Flickr's "help" capabilities are about on a par with Yahoo's: i.e., it will probably work, but if not, you're on your own.

You Can Feed an RSS to Water but You Can't Make Him Think

I set up a Bloglines account perhaps a year ago, and have made much less use of it than I might have. Partly it's a matter of habit--forming the habit, that is, of checking my account regularly.

I suspect, with all the information out there--and is it a common librarian's tendency to be an information packrat, or is it just me?--wise use of RSS feeds includes being selective. It would be all too easy to end up with such an enormous wall of feeds that it would hurt your brain just to look at it. (Sort of like my approximately 33,000,000 Opera bookmarks before I fled screaming and started using del.ici.ous instead.) But I am thinking now that a very useful setup would include:

• Several of the blogs I'm interested in but forget to visit regularly.

• A couple of major news sites, especially sites such as the BBC whose content I'm not likely to encounter in the Tribune or on the radio.

• Some specialty sites that I really need to keep up with but often don't seem to find time to visit, such as Dewey RSS Feeds, the Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA, and MARBI. 

Could RSS help me keep informed on what I need to know and filter out some of the stuff I don't need? Ya think?

Well, I'm going to try these ideas as I find time. And I might explore how I would go about setting up RSS feeds from The Cataloger's Burrow and the ever-nascent Flaming Catheads as well.