Podcasts

I looked at Podcast Alley, and decided to browse, rather than search, topics. Naturally, I went to education, since that's what libraries tend to get lumped into. And what should I find but Grammar Girl. I frequently forget about Grammar Girl, and am always pleased when I find it again. I knew about the blog, but was not aware of the podcast. After listening to some episodes, I feel even better about "me." "Me" as in the objective first person pronoun that, between you and me, I believe is a perfectly good word.
Putting my inner grammarian back in her room, I did a keyword search of "library 2.0" (without the quotes) and found a lovely podcast about primary sources. There are differences in what constitutes a primary source depending on the subject. For example, a journal article is probably a primary source in science, and probably not a primary source in history. The podcast is from the Library Survival Guide at Emory University found here: http://guides.main.library.emory.edu/podcast.

YouTube

Well, having just said in my previous post that YouTube could be used for booktalks, I decided to look for booktalks on YouTube. Lo and behold, there are bunches! Many of them lack descriptive titles, simply calling themselves "book talk" or something similar, with no indication of what the subject of the book talk is. That wouldn't be so bad if the first sentence of the description says what it's about, but that isn't always the case either. Library Lowdown indicates the subject of the talk in the description, such as this one on books dealing with Antarctica. Cool.

Award Winning Web 2.0 Sites

Alas, BBC Player left me disappointed. While radio stations are available most places, video is only for those in the UK. Rights agreements. So, no free Dr. Who episodes for me.



One Sentence is cool. A complete story in only one sentence. My favorite is the person who sat on the grass near a rock. A rock that subsequently got up and walked off, showing itself to have been a bobcat in disguise. Some of the entries make me wonder why anyone would want the whole world to know about that. I can't think of a library use for this one.



I can think of uses for YouTube. No, it's not just a mindless time waster. There's good stuff on there. It could be a place to put tutorials or booktalks, or even do staff training. Instead of trying to catch everyone to update them on that cool new Sirsi feature, it could be posted to YouTube. There's always training at the annual Regional All Staff meetings, but they're on the same day, which means no-one can go to both. No problem, just record it and post it to YouTube. Of course, the training part assumes that one can set up a private channel.

Technorati

Once again, the hardest part is coming up with a user name. Now, in order to claim it, I have to put a bit of code in a post. Technorati Profile. And now that that's done, I did a search for learning 2.0. The results treated the search as two different terms, so I put them in quotation marks. That got closer to what I want, but a surprising number of hits on the first page were not in English. Interesting. Ahhhh, limiting to searching tags and blogs got me much closer to what I was after. Always a challenge to figure out exactly what strategy works best where.

Library Thing, Part II

Ah, Library Thing is up! I put a few things in. I notice that the only status categories available are "Currently Reading" and "To Read." A pity I can't have finished them, but there you go. As instructed, here's the link. My Library Thing.

Wiki

I liked the SJCPL wiki. It's like web picks on steroids. There's clearly a lot that libraries can do with wikis. Book reviews, subject guides, how to do its. Bull Run looks like it uses as wiki as a way to publicize events. These things can all be done other ways, of course. It's a matter of what works best for a particular library. If a wiki works best, then go for it! And if a more traditional approach works best, use that.

Library/Web 2.0 Perspectives

I found the perscpectives interesting. Technolust-- the desire to go with something that's shiny and new because it's shiny and new -- is a tempting enemy which must be fought. I thought Wendy Schultz's Library 4.0 looked a lot like Library 1.5 -- that place between commodity and product with comfy chairs and task lighting.
So, what's the best way to stay with the 2.0 ball? Chase after it, and you're always behind. Get ahead of it, and it could suddenly curve or hit you in the head. Never take your eyes off it and you risk running into a tree. What's the tree? Dunno. But I'm sure it's there.