Thing the Last

There were very few of the 23 Things that I hadn’t encountered before. I think YouSendIt was the only one I hadn’t heard of; Digg and Hulu were probably the only ones I hadn’t ever used before. Oh, and I’m not so much LinkedIn. Even though I was familiar with most of them, I hadn’t given much thought to their potential application in libraries beyond the occasional “that’s interesting” when I’d come across a library that used one. I definitely appreciated the opportunity to think about these things in a different way (as well as the opportunity to rant about some things I didn’t know I needed to rant about).

The only thing I might change about the program is that some of the Things are already a bit dated. TinyURL is not as popular now as other services like bit.ly, or goo.gl, so we may want to mention some of these as well. There is also potential for a deeper reflection on some of the privacy issues surrounding social media outlets—though I don’t want to force anyone to write a long essay on this topic (which is easily possible).

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Thing the Twenty-Second

In its attempt to collect all of the information in the known universe, Google (somewhat secretly) began working on a project in 2002. The intention was to make books searchable, so that people could find what they were looking for. Like many of Google’s informational goals, it sounds like a noble one; however, it’s much more complicated than it first seems.

Some of the features of Google books include:

• Google search of contents of books
• Browse books by subject
• Log in to review books, mark favorites, create bookshelves and read/to-read lists (much like LibraryThing or GoodReads)

You may initially think how could this possibly be bad? I’ll admit that there have been plenty of times in my life that I’ve found myself flipping through an entire book, scanning for a specific passage that I vaguely remembered, but hadn’t marked. At those moments, I would have given just about anything to have been able to search the book like that. This, of course, is not the major issue. One big problem with Google books is copyright. While there is certainly no shortage of volumes that have passed into public domain, a huge portion of the books that Google would like to digitize are still subject to copyright. The rights to these books are still owned by their publishers, and in order to display them, Google first has to get permission. As a result, only portions of them are available—what publisher is going to allow free online access to an item they intend to sell? Some publishers *coughHarperCollinscough* don’t even like that libraries allow free access to their titles—they’ve actually capped the number of loans allowed on their eBooks, after which the library must re-purchase the title. Having only certain pages available, or none at all, severely limits the scope of the Google books project.

As a partial remedy for this issue, Google books calls the limited available pages of copyrighted items “previews,” and allows its users to follow a link to purchase the actual item. However, I feel that this makes them less of an information portal than a sales outlet for publishers and retail bookstores—a huge problem in the “free access to information” department. Perhaps if they included a link to WorldCat, people using Google books could find the nearest library that owned the item instead of being told that the only way to obtain access is by purchasing it.

Another issue to consider is the fact that Google books is a “metadata train wreck”. There are any number of sources that illuminate just how horrid, inconsistent, and inaccurate Google’s metadata records can be. There are books on the Internet dated 1900 and books supposedly written before the author’s birth, and that’s not to mention the scanning errors—pages that are upside-down or backwards, etc.

While quite a few libraries have partnered with Google for this project, many—including the Library of Congress—have remained wary, whether for copyright or metadata reasons. Although I am entirely in favor of the idea of such dramatically increased access to books and information, if it can’t be done in a consistent, accurate manner without breaking any laws, it may end up doing more harm than good.

Thing the Twenty-First

There are probably few people left who have used the internet to search for information, but have never used a wiki. Thanks to Wikipedia, internet users everywhere have access to some 17 million articles worth of moderately accurate information. The brilliance of wikis—informational collaboration among members of a community—is also the major problem with wikis, especially those that are very large and publicly-available: authority control. The more people who may edit a wiki (especially anonymously), the greater the likelihood that inaccurate or unresearched information will find its way into the collaboration. Wikipedia used to be notorious for this; although they have since imposed standards and begun to require citations of verifiable sources, many articles still contain headers that essentially say “Watch out—some of this information may be crap.” The Onion did a great send-up of Wikipedia a few years ago—it’s still one of my favorite articles they’ve done.

As librarians, we aren’t just interested in easy information; we’re interested in good information. Wikis can cause problems in this area when used as encyclopedias. However, when used by small, controlled groups for specific projects, wikis can be enormously useful. Many organizations, our own library included, use wikis for information projects such as policy manuals. We actually maintain several, including a Super User wiki, a Youth Programming wiki, and staff training modules.

For this Thing, I also checked out the In-N-Out Burger page of the training wiki. I noticed that it had very little information, so I did a little bit of research and added the website, as well as the hours for the Frisco location. It was very simple to do; I just had to click “Edit” at the top, and I could begin adding whatever information I felt was important.

At one point in my life, I used to keep what basically amounted to a list of miscellany—it was mostly just random facts, or lists of things like names of phobias, or the NATO Phonetic Alphabet. Had I decided I needed to keep track of it in an organized manner, or share it with others, I could have made use of a sort of personal wiki.

P.S.: The best-named wiki in the history of ever is the Star Wars wiki.

Thing the Twentieth

My experience with podcasts so far extends to exactly NPR’s This American Life. I’ve never downloaded an episode, though; I actually follow it through Google Reader. You can actually also get apps for Android and iPhone for $3; it lets you listen to anything from their archives on-demand, as well as ”search by contributor, view staff favorites and create your own favorites list, read blog updates, and connect to the weekly live feed on Friday nights^[1].”

Podcasting is an almost endlessly useful tool. You can put practically anything into a podcast—I’ve actually seen it referred to as “blogging out loud.”Radio programs such as This American Life can use podcasts to archive and stream content, and even to generate a small amount of revenue (you can download archived episodes of TAL for 99¢ through iTunes). Libraries could use it for all sorts of things, including virtual tours and storytimes.  We could create podcasts of some of the classes we offer, or even take it a step further and create vodcasts, where patrons could actually see the presentation—this could potentially be a solution for patrons who don’t make it into a class because it’s full.

Another similar concept is screencasting, which creates presentations from a computer screen, generally using special software to capture screen images/video and to edit them into a coherent presentation. This is another potentially useful tool, especially for the computer classes we offer—we could create presentations where we actually show patrons exactly how to use the different programs we offer courses on, from within the actual program (this would also work for things like “how to download Adobe Digital Editions” or “how to transfer ebooks to your nook”). Of course, some of the software for this can be expensive, but there are also free versions floating around.

In general, podcasting (/vodcasting/screencasting), is a very useful tool for libraries; I’m not surprised to see that the number of libraries making use of this tool is growing.

Thing the Nineteenth

I have long since lost count of the number of times I’ve been talking to someone about a show and heard them say “I just watch it on Hulu,” or “it’s not on Hulu, so I don’t really get to watch it.” Somehow, before I’d even heard of it, Hulu was everywhere. Between that and Netflix, it’s not hard to see why traditional television, as well as studios who distribute DVDs, are complaining about losing profits. While the owners of the content ultimately have the choice of whether or not to provide it through such services, in my experience, many people will simply choose not to watch something that isn’t available through one of these avenues.

Services like Netflix and Hulu also seem to be partly responsible for the decline of traditional video rental stores like Blockbuster; if people can get things delivered to them and not have to pay late fees—even if it means they can’t get any other items until they return what they’ve got—they’re probably going to choose this method. Fortunately for us, this sounds a bit like our own loan policy.

I think that, if people were able to check out movies in streaming format, this would quickly become a hugely popular service. I imagine that it would work something like our current downloadables; we would probably purchase a certain number of licences for any given item, and patrons would place digital holds much like they do for ebooks now. One interesting dynamic to consider, however, would be the fact that it would almost certainly be required that the streaming content include some type of ads. Would this be construed as the library endorsing whatever product or service was being advertised? Would it require us to distance ourselves from the content of the ads via a disclaimer?

Thing the Eighteenth

Depending on who you talk to, the primary purpose of YouTube seems to be for distributing crazy cat videos. This particular avenue is of very limited use to libraries, although there could be arguments made in favor of it if there were any videos featuring Dewey…

One of the best library videos I’ve ever seen is the one Shelley sent around a few months ago, which uses books falling like dominos to promote the library—although a full minute and a half of books falling over and off of things like that is a nightmare when viewed by a preservationist.

One creative way I’ve seen our own library use YouTube is for the student teller auditions for the Lone Star Storytelling Festival. A video of the student telling a memorized story was required—this could be presented either on a DVD, or as a YouTube video. The promo for the Summer Reading Club was also a YouTube video. We also have our own YouTube channel—though we don’t utilize it very frequently.

Certainly, there are plenty of ways to utilize such a popular and powerful resource, and we’ve definitely discovered several already. We even sometimes embed videos on our blog!

Thing the Seventeenth

I started using Last.fm probably three years ago, when a friend’s band started putting their songs up there. Right away, I noticed that it had a number of cool features, the major one being that I could listen to songs that I didn’t have access to on CD, etc. I liked that I could find a pretty decent selection of music that I liked, and that I could choose the songs I wanted to listen to (as long as they were available).

Later on, I also signed up for an account at Pandora, mainly because they had an app, which Last.fm didn’t (at least at that time), which meant that I could play music over my phone while driving—I could even plug my phone into the auxiliary jack and play music through my car’s speakers! The downside to Pandora is that, although you can create “stations” based on artists or songs that you like, you can’t pick specific songs you want to listen to; even the stations based on a certain song don’t seem to actually play that particular song, just ones like it.

There were a few other features that became annoying after a while, too. One was that ads began creeping into my playlist, so that after every few songs, you’d hear what was essentially a commercial—I understand that this helped keep the service free, but it was nonetheless annoying. Another feature that was often frustrating was that, although it allowed you to skip/”thumbs-down” songs that you didn’t like (as well as “thumbs-up” ones that you did), you could only skip a certain number of songs every hour. Granted, it wouldn’t play the songs you didn’t like again, but it was still irritating to be told that you couldn’t skip any more songs right now.

Because of the limitations of services like these, I don’t think they will ever entirely replace ”owned music”—that is, having local access to songs (whether on CD or in digital format). I don’t know that the same can be said for things like iTunes, though. People will continue to want to have some measure of control over the songs they hear; services like iTunes that allow you to pick and choose what specific songs you want (even if you have to pay for them) give people the advantage of not having to purchase an entire album for just a couple of songs. I do think people will continue to check out CDs, too—even if it’s just to take them home and load them into iTunes.

Thing the Sixteenth

Google Docs has been a much more recent addition to my own web 2.0 use. I have been using flash drives for document storage/transportation for years. Occasionally, though, I discover I don’t have one with me when I’m working on something I’ll need to finish, or just have, elsewhere. I used to have to email the file to myself to accomplish this. Enter: Google Docs. Now I don’t even need to be on a computer that has any type of office software—it just needs an internet connection. You can save files in several different formats, so if you’re creating something in Google Docs, you can download it in a format that will be compatible with whatever office software you have. You can also upload files from other office programs and edit and share them with Google Docs.

There are a few minor drawbacks to Google Docs. One is that it does require an internet connection, so if you find yourself needing to access your documents while living in a cave or under a rock, or in North Dakota (where I grew up), you won’t be able to. Another is that, like all collaborative documents, the more people that have access to it, the more likely it is that chaos will develop due to too many people editing the same thing if there isn’t enough communication (though this can be mitigated through sharing files across multiple accounts, rather than giving everyone access to the same account—you’ll be able to see who edited it last, etc).

I’m going to do something crazy here and suggest that Google Docs could probably be successfully used in a library in situations where a lot of people, some in different departments, need access to the same documents. Perhaps we could use it to share our desk schedules internally…

Caboose: Look what I found!
Donut: I found it!
Caboose: Look what I took credit for finding.

Thing the Fifteenth

I use Google Maps all the time, and have been doing so for several years. When I finally got a smartphone, it was one of the very first apps I grabbed, and I’ve been more-or-less perpetually glad that I did so. It’s far easier than printing out directions and trying to follow them as you’re driving, especially if you don’t have a navigator. And now that they’ve added a “navigation” feature, it basically becomes a GPS device, complete with an unnecessarily loud voice shouting directions at you in the restaurant when you meant to hit “driving directions” instead…

I was also very glad when they added the “traffic” feature; I’ve used it to check (and subsequently alter) my route home from work many times. It’s also very nice to be able to search the map for a specific location—say, SMU’s McFarlin Auditorium (if you went to the David Sedaris reading the other night)—then get directions from where you are without having to leave the map app.

Google Maps isn’t perfect, though. There have been a number of interesting driving direction searches floating around the internet. One suggests entering “Japan” for your starting point and “China” for your destination. In doing this, Google will automatically direct you from the center of one to the other (it will do the same for cities if you don’t give a specific street address). However, when you scroll to step 42 of the directions it returns, you get “Jet ski across the Pacific Ocean.”

Oops. This is the reason that the results of every search include the following message:

These directions are for planning purposes only. You may find that construction projects, traffic, weather, or other events may cause conditions to differ from the map results, and you should plan your route accordingly. You must obey all signs or notices regarding your route.

 The most useful applications of Google Maps in libraries are probably assisting patrons with driving directions (with, of course, a similar disclaimer), and tagging our location with our phone number, website, hours, and other kinds of useful information about us that people may need in attempting to get here.

Thing the Fourteenth

As I was just finishing the thirteenth Thing when I had to leave yesterday, I split the fourteenth into a separate post—you know, for luck and such. It’s currently off assisting some dwarves reclaim a long-lost treasure from a dragon.

Actually, that’s not at all where I sent it. I sent it to my email. A file, I mean. Very shortly thereafter, I received both the file I sent, and a delivery confirmation (I used the same address for both ends). I downloaded the file, and it was lovely. Sort of like Television Chocolate. I think that YouSendIt was the only Thing of the twenty-three that I hadn’t heard of before. I kind of wish I had; there have been plenty of times I wanted to send large files to other people, but discovered they exceeded the size limit for every service I was able to use (email, SMS, etc).

I don’t know how the library would use YouSendIt, though. It’s not common that we find ourselves needing to send large files to…well, anyone, really. If we need to share something within the library, we’ve already probably saved it on the network drive; we don’t send files to patrons, and anything we do share with everyone gets uploaded to the appropriate social media outlet. While it’s certainly a useful tool, I don’t see it doing much to help our patrons.

*Completely random, unrelated note: As I’m finishing this, there is a small child walking back and forth in front of me wearing a “Thing 2″ shirt. That totally counts as some kind of bonus.