Thing #15: Rollyo

A FASCINATING CONCEPT

I found the idea of limiting a search to a select list of websites a wonderful one, since I am often frustrated by the deluge of results returned by search engines such as Google or HotBot that search the entire web.

On  the Public Domain e-Books Search serachroll, I was able to bring up eBooks for Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan without difficulty.

The Rare Book Library Search serachroll was a bit more problematical.  I couldn't find any listings for either William the Dragon by Polly Donnison or The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.

The first is quite rare, the second not rare at all, although I assume there are rare editions.  Perhaps the book dealers whose sites compose the list just don't have any copies of these items available right now.

The Quick Quotes serachroll easily brought up Shakespeare's "We are such stuff as dreams are made on."

Again, a good idea to search multiple quotation indexes in aggregate, while excluding those same quotes scattered across random websites.

JOINING UP

I routinely run searches for obscure items (such as 44-string pedal harps) with only limited success.

I can usually increase my odds of a relevant hit by searching promising sites individually rather than googling the Web as a whole.  But it's tedious having to search each site individually.

So I was eager to sign up for a Rollyo account and try my hand at creating a custom Rollyo list.

I registered for an account and created a list entitled Harps for Sale.  On it I placed 24 sites I regularly search for listings of folk harps and pedal harps (either new or used).

I entered 24 harp sites I search either regularly or occasionally for harps or related items (strings, sheet music, CDs, etc.).

My category was Arts & Humanities.  My tags were: harps, musical instruments, pedal harps, and folk harps.  I chose to make this list public.

HARPS FOR SALE

Now when I log into Rollyo, I see Harps for Sale as one of my searchrolls.  How cool!

I typed in Lyon Healy Style 85 GP (a type of 44-string pedal harp manufactured by Lyon & Healy) and clicked on Search.  The results were highly relevant.  Much more so than when I search the Web at large using Google.  Neat!

Here's the link:  Virtual Unicorn's Harps for Sale searchroll on Rollyo.

I suggest you try the following search term: Camac Clio, Salvi Daphne, Dusty Strings FH36B, and Thormahlen Swan.  These are all popular harp models.  The first two are pedal harps, the second two, folk harps.

Searching these will give you an idea of who on my list is currently carrying which models of harp.  Now you know the sort of things I look at on the Web for fun.  Happy searching!

Thing #14: Online Productivity Tools

FOUR FOR THE PRICE OF ONE

I have to say, I'm really getting tired of multiple Things masquerading under the aegis of a single numeral.

Is 23 Things You Should Know about Web 2.0 really still 43 Things that have just been consolidated so as to appear to be fewer in number?

I'd have found the 23 Things experience a lot more straightforward if each Thing had represented a single Web 2.0 tool and participants had been asked to do just one a week for however many weeks it took.

Artificially compressing the experience has only created stress for me and many of my fellow participants.

23 Things was billed--over-optimistically, in my opinion--as compact and time-efficient.  It simply isn't.

It takes quite a bit of time to absorb even a surface understanding of these brave new tools.  If we're serious about taking all this in in a meaningful way, we should allow ourselves sufficient time to process the experience.  Speed-dating really isn't my thing.

Not much time left till deadline.  I am determined to finish 23 Things.  It was, after all, one of my New Year's resolutions.

I am also very, very tired.

Perhaps this handy countdown widget will spur me on.  I intend to refer to it often, in ever rising panic as the deadline nears.

Created by OnePlusYou

iGOOGLE

I took a look at iGoogle and chose Gainesville, News, Humor, Business, Technology, and Entertainment as my selected interests.

My background theme is called Sweet Dreams (an evening sky with a crescent moon).  My Country / Region are, of course, the U.S., with my zipcode as 32667.

It really didn't take much longer than the 30 seconds claimed, and created a very nice, compartmentalized, personalized start page. 

Features included the weather forecast for Micanopy, Gmail, NYTimes top stories, Google Finance Portfolios, ETonline Breaking News, Date & Time, CNN.com, Joke of the Day, The Wall Street Journal, Movies, YouTube, UF News, Go Comics, CNET News, and TV Guide.

It seems to have lifted all my personal information directly from my Google Account without me having to do anything.

Now every time I log into Google, I should be able to reach my personalized iGoogle startpage just by clicking the iGoogle link in the upper righthand corner of the screen.

Pretty cool.

I decided to add a few gadgets just to spiff things up.  The gadgets I chose were Google Calendar, Hangman (word game), Current Moon Phase, ToDo, Free iTumes Downloads, Google Translate, Dictionary, Spanish Word a Day, Funny Cat Photos, Movies Trailer of the Day. . . .

By this time, I'd gone through 20 pages of gadgets, and there seemed to be no end in sight, so I stopped there.

GOOGLE CALENDAR

After reading the recommended article entitled "The Web's Best Calendars," I chose Google Calendar for its drag-and-drop editing and color-coded layout.

Scrybe looked interesting because of its to-do list and ability to sync changes made offline, but I decided Google Calendar would work well enough for a start.

I filled in some projects and appointments for the next few days.  It was pretty painless.

TA DA LIST

I chose Ta Da List to be my online to-do list.  Signup was quick and easy.

I then created a list of various Cat Tasks: buy more bacon-flavored ferret treats, investigate kitty exercise wheels online, etc.

Not difficult at all.

I thought it was interesting that signup for a Ta Da List account issued me a private webpage rather than a login from a centralized page.

BACKPACK

Backpack bills itself as "An Intranet in 30 Seconds," and includes a lot of interesting features like info-sharing pages, messageboards, and to-do lists.

The feature that intrigued me most, however, was the group calendar.  I'm in charge of my department's shared calendar, comprising daily work schedules, meetings, training sessions, and presentations.

The calendar we use now is a clunky Excel document on a shared server.  It's not very elegant, easy to read, or easy to use.  I'd love to find something better with which to replace it!

Having taken video tours of both how to compose a Backpack page and how to use the Backpack Calendar, I'm not sure the calendar can handle the complexity of my department's schedule--but the basic Backpack page looks intriguing.

I decided to sign up for a free account so that I could check out the features, and that's when I realized Backpack costs between $7 and $100 per month, depending on the number of users, pages, and storage space needed.

Oh, well!  I will have to give it a pass.

CHECKING OUT THE SITES

I scanned the recommended resources, all lists of online productivity tools.  Some of the same tools pop up over and over again.

Remember the Milk (to-do lists), Bloglines (RSS feed manager), My Stickies (sticky notes webpage markup), Del.icio.us (bookmarks), Meebo (IM aggregator), Google Calendar (online scheduling), iGoogle (personalized startpage), and PBwiki are the ones I noted.

That these sites are listed by multiple recommenders likely indicates that they are both well-designed and popular.  Those I don't already use, I'll keep in mind for the future.

Despite my fatigue, I am definitely finding 23 Things an eye-opening experience.  I had no idea all this stuff was available on the web--and much of it for free.

Thing #13: Library Thing

NIGHT OF THE LIVING LIBRARIANS

All right.  I confess.  When I first read about LibraryThing in the 23 Things at NEFLIN blog, I found the concept intriguing--followed quickly by pangs of conscience.

Thoughts flitted through my mind about handing the asylum keys over to the inmates.

Allow actual readers / patrons / laypeople to catalog their own libraries?  What about Library of Congress subject headings?  Uniform titles?  Authority control?

My old cataloguing professor, may she rest in peace, returned briefly from the grave to haunt me.

COMING AROUND TO THE CONCEPT

But then I actually went to the site and read a little more, took the tour (exquisitely done), read the FAQs (informative, clear), and I abandoned all loyalty to the past.  I like LibraryThing.

There.  I've said it.  I have only myself to blame.

The death warrant will be issued within moments of my publishing this blogpost.  Hit squads from the Cataloguing Department will now ambush me in the back hallway.  My only hope lies in anonymity / disguise.

Maybe I could put on Groucho Marx glasses and pass myself off as narwhale.  One with really long flippers that terminate in cloven hooves.  But Virtual Unicorn digresses.

SOCIAL NETWORKING FOR BOOK LOVERS

"Reframing" is a favorite phrase of one of my library system's Division Directors.  It means looking at things in a new way in order to free oneself from knee-jerk (usually negative) responses.

I find that if I look on LibraryThing as a social networking site for book lovers, not a torch-bearing, pitchfork-wielding mob of iconoclasts out to burn down the sacred temple of Cataloguing and put all the holy people out of a job, I'm much more comfortable with the concept.

It's more like a book lovers' club or a book discussion group, rather than a traditional library.  (But, of course, who says libraries have any intention of remaining "traditional"?)

And it's certainly not a books-by-mail service or bookstore.  I love the quote in the FAQs: "LibraryThing cares about books, not about SELLING books."

MY NEFARIOUS PAST

I love books.  I love talking about books and reading about books and hanging out with other people who appreciate books.

That's why I've worked at my library for 22 years, worked in bookstores for 7 years before that, have been known to write a book from time to time and once, many years ago when I first went to college, was a card-carrying English major.

These days, I think they call it language arts.  But what it really means is books.

Yes, I admit it.  I'm a book lover.  I've been a book lover all my life.  I know it's habit-forming, but I don't care.  Long live the printed word!  I intend to depart this life with book in hand.

A LITTLE FURTHER INVESTIGATION

Just because I don't hold hooves on the first date--I'm not that kind of unicorn--I decided to do a tad more investigation before making a commitment to join.

BROWARD COUNTY YA LIBRARIAN

I really liked what the Broward County YA Librarian was doing with her LibraryThing account: keeping up with her library school classwork (reading lists of YA books) and providing a forum for her teen volunteers.

I can see immediate application for my department's newly created position of YA librarian.  This sounds like a great way to keep a core of interested teen library supporters in touch with one another, even when they don't have transportation to come to the library for, say, book club discussions.

FLASH-MOBS: NO TORCHES, NO PITCHFORKS

I also checked out the LibraryThing Blog, where each month's Early Reviewer books are posted.  That feature holds a lot of interest for me.  Reading prepublication review copies and writing reviews looks like tons of fun!

I also read with fascination about flash-mob cataloguing parties, where a group of volunteer descend upon an organization's small, unorganized library.  Using wireless laptops and CueCat barcode scanners, they catalog the collection using LibraryThing.

This reminds me of the inventory companies that used to come once a year to the bookstore where I worked to inventory the stock after hours between the time we closed the doors in the evening and opened them on the morning of the following day.

The difference here, of course, is that the flash-mob cataloguers are paid only in free pizza and good fellowship.  Sounds like another dynamite project for teen volunteers!

SIGNING UP

By this time, I was sold, so I decided to sign up for a free account.  I found the price-break (first 200 books free, $15 per year thereafter or $25 for a lifetime membership) entirely reasonable.

Signing up was quick and easy.  I edited my profile to include an image and geographic location.

Next step was to enter some books.  I decided to go with some recent reads.  The process was simple.  LibraryThing takes care of the grunt work of supplying the bibliographic info so I was able to concentrate on short, punchy reviews.

WIDGETS THAT WEREN'T

I decided to add two widgets to my blog: a standard blog widget, which shows random books from my LibraryThing library and a search widget, which enables readers to search my library directly from the blog.

Alas, nothing I did could get them to show up.  The code pasted in fine, but Preview never revealed the widgets.

I scared myself silly at least twice when, having pasted in the code, all the other text of my blogpost seemingly disappeared.

Luckily, the first time Blogger had autosaved just before I did the paste.  After that, I saved manually before every paste attempt--but still to no avail.

Alas, I must content myself with pasting in a link to VirtualUnicorn's LibraryThing profile and VirtualUnicorn's LibraryThing library page.

Sigh.  This is not as fancy as I would have liked it to have been, but I need to get on to Thing #14.

FEATURES OF INTEREST

Just as a last word, I thought I'd quickly run over those features I found of greatest interest about LibraryThing.

I was not terribly interested in any of the group features right at the moment.  I think I'd like to watch (old-style listserves used to call it "lurking") for a while before joining.

The Early Reviewer program did look interesting to me, although I see there is a lot of competition for the review copies: 5 to 30 times more requests that there are books to go around.

I did, however, put my name down for The Glassblower of Murano by Marina Fiorato, The New 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth by Sophie Javna Earthworks Group, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire b C.M. Mayo, The Survival Handbook by Collin Towell, The Moon & the Sun by Vonda McIntyre, Mom's Guide to Growing Your Family Green by Terra Wellington, and The Manual of Deception by Jedediah Berry.

I'll just have to wait and see.

The Members Book Giveaway Program also looks interesting.  I intend to investigate further at a later time.

I also took a look at LibraryThing local, listing my area as the 50-mile radius around Gainesville, Florida.  I was astonished to find nothing listed.  So I added Comics for Everyone, a featured ACLD event to take place on March 19th.

ENOUGH

Good heavens, look at the time.  It's 2:30 in the afternoon.  All for now.  I haven't even had breakfast.

Thing #12: Wikis

WIKIS I ALREADY USE

I feel more confident about wikis than I have about any of the other Web 2.0 tools we've studied so far in 23 Things because I've recently created a wiki and I belong to two more.

The wiki I administer (take care of housekeeping for) is The ACLD Storytime Wiki, created for use by our library district's Youth Services Planning Group.  It's all about programming for children and teens.

The other two wikis I belong to are the Sunshine State Library Leadership Institute's Alumni Wiki (a closed wiki for SSLLI participants and their mentors, alumni, and instructors) and The Youth Services @ ACLD Wiki (created for the YS Department to keep track of group projects).

All three are PBwikis.

WHY I CHOSE PBwiki

Before I set up the ACLD Storytime Wiki, I used WikiMatrix to compare features of the various wiki engines available.  It was quite comprehensive and easy to use.

I ultimately chose PBwiki because the basic service is free and has plenty of room.  It can also be upgraded for a modest cost, is entirely WYSIWYG and requires no knowledge of coding.  Best of all, it supports multimedia content such as clipart, photos, and videoclips with sound.

These features struck me as perfect for creating a powerful but very user-friendly wiki dedicated to youth programming.

SAINT JOSEPH COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY SYSTEM WIKI

The Subject Guides portion of the SJCPL website looked quite straightforward.  It reminded me of ACLD's staff bookmarks and Great Links public bookmarks.  The layout resembles Wikipedia's.

I took a peek at the homepage, which isn't part of the wiki, and noticed a few points of interest: Encore catalog searcing, IM reference service, audiobooks on iPod, a GameBlog, and a dedicated teen page.  ACLD doesn't offer any of these services--yet.

The entire website is very, very spare.  A little too spare for my taste.  A purely white background just isn't engaging to my eye.  I'd recommend some sort of (subtle) background image to offset the plain-and-simple text, thus lending interest to the page.

BOOK LOVERS WIKI

Princeton Public Library's Book Lovers Wiki was created for their 2007 summer reading program and apparently featured prizes for those who contributed content in the form of book reviews.

The wiki comprises about 200 reviews in all, and the wiki notes that the wiki has been discontinued (it remains accessible solely as an archive) because library patrons are now able to enter their reviews directly into PPL's online catalog.

The wiki is pleasingly crafted in pale shades of green, and each review contains both an image of the book's jacket and rating in the form of stars.  Reviewers may be identified by name or choose to remain anonymous.

I like the design flair that went into this functional / minimalist yet aesthetic wiki.

LIBRARY SUCCESS

Meredith Farkas's "Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki" is another that resembles the look and feel of Wikipedia.  It looks well organized and comprehensive, a sort of central clearinghouse for all sorts of useful information about running a library.

In my opinion, the Alachua County Library District could learn a thing or two from this wiki about how to organize information employees need to access easily and often in order to do their jobs.

Right now, our forms, policies and procedures are chaotically scattered over several servers.  Employees often spend more time searching for a form than they do filling it out.  It's remarkably inefficient.

It's rumored that all these forms, etc., are about to be moved from their disparate servers to our staff-only intranet.  If that's the case, I hope whoever is in charge of the move will organize the information as thoughtfully as Ms. Farkas has her best practices wiki.

LIBRARY STAFF WIKI

The Albany County Public Library's staff wiki is obviously a PBwiki.  It has that distinctive look.

Having a centralized, easily accessible place to store communal information (such as library procedures) has long been a dream of mine.  Apparently others consider such a place a worthy enterprise as well.

I feel mildly cheered.  At least I'm not the only one on the planet who thinks a half-way decently organized procedures manual a goal worth prioritizing.

Now if only  such a thing could become a reality at ACLD.

BLOGGING LIBRARIES WIKI

Blogging Libraries Wiki, like The Library Success Wiki, is powered by MediaWiki.  It looks a lot like the SJCPL Subject Guides Wiki, which is to say, it follows the Wikipedia model of being bare-bones, spare, and texty rather than visually arresting.

Though it contains no images other than a very simple logo, it's a nice idea: create a wiki to collect links to library blogs.  Librarians will find this a useful tool, even if the workmanlike design fails to excite much emotional response.  (Fun to look at this wiki is not.)

Though the lack of images is most likely a constraint of the wiki's service level--probably basic and therefore free--I hope the wiki's creators will eventually opt to upgrade to a level of service that allows greater use of images, preferably photos.

ADDING TO MY WIKIS

During the last couple of weeks, I've added pages to all three of the wikis to which I belong.

As a class assignment, I uploaded my class project's "Charge" (formal statement of purpose and delineation of roles and responsibilities for those involved) and Gantt chart (timeline for the project) to the SSLLI Alumni Wiki.

(I wish I could show them to you, but it's a closed wiki.)

I created a quick-and-dirty booklist entitled "Some Good Teen Reads" to the booklists area of the YS @ ACLD Wiki.  Because it's an open wiki, this page is available for all to see.

Finally, I created a couple of new folders (Information and Notes), added 60 new users to the wiki, performed various edits to existing pages, and fashioned 27 new pages for the wiki.

Here are a couple of my favorites: "FAQ: Reasons to Contribute" and "Fingerplay: Ten Little Candles."

BUSY BUSY

Virtual Unicorn has been a busy beast.  Just one of many reasons I am so far behind in doing my 23 Things!

But that is why the Powers that Be created weekends, and I am busily using this one to get caught up.

Thing #11: Social Media

SOCIAL MEDIA IN PLAIN ENGLISH

Another excellent explanatory video on a Web 2.0 topic by the LeFevers at The Common Craft Show.  I want to rush right out and copy them!

The simplicity of their (ostesibly) low-tech approach is just what I need to understand the subject matter.  The length is just right, and the props (mostly hand-drawn paper cutouts) never get in the way of the message.

Next time I need to do an instructional video or training session, I intend to channel The Common Craft Show.

DIGG

I couldn't help myself.  The first thing I did when I got to the Digg homepage was watch the new Star Trek movie teaser trailer.  They've certainly pulled out all the stops on the special effects.  Intriguing.

I also viewed Dmitry Orlov's 5-minute videotaped remarks on "Superpower Soup": the ingredients he believes are necessary to cause a superpower--such as the U.S.S.R. or the U.S.--to collapse socially and economically.  Scary.

I then read a short article entitled "Ecstasy Treatment Draws Rave Reviews for Vet Treatment" by Mark Rutherford dealing with a new use for the rave drug ecstasy: treating military personnel suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.  The drug apparentl "inhibit[s] the subjective fear response to an emotional threat" which is the cause of PTSD.  Interesting.

The tour was succinct and clear.  I wanted to join right away but restrained myself so that I could go on to Reddit.

REDDIT

Here I read "Obama to Lift Ban on Embryonic Stem Cell Research" and "How to Sccessfully Compete with Open Source Software."

The first was terse and informational (with a complaint against The Wall Street Journal's assertion that embryonic stem cell research is "opposed by religious groups" (as though all religious groups oppose it).

The second was too long to read in its entirety, but I skimmed it.  It made some valid points about how commercial software can compete with open-source software through better marketing, design, and user support.

The Reddit Intro was super simple, cute, and non-threatening.  (By threatening, I mean "makes me wonder if I click this link, will I be sucked into an inescapable vortex of endless frustration and wasted time?"  Reddit'd intro didn't.)

NEWSVINE

Newsvine looked much more like a mainstream news site than either Digg or Reddit, although the introduction makes it clear that there are no editors and that content is controlled by those users who vote.

The idea of creating a Newsvine column entirely out of "seeded" (linked from elsewhere) articles was an interesting thought.  Sort of like a scrapbook, into which one pasts "clippings" (links) of interesting news articles one has come across.

After looking at the intro, I went to the homepage and selected "Democrats Blast Limbaugh for Comment on Kennedy" to read because I figured it would contain a lot of reader comments, which it did.  Many vilified Limbaugh for his recent remarks.  Others insulted the commenters.

I did not find reading the exchange particularly useful.  Sadly, others' commentary only rarely interests me.  Most of it's so ephemeral / inarticulate / forgettable.  Who cares?

Just about the only time I pay attention to commentary is when consumers are rating their experience with a product or a company.

Was the item as described?  Did it arrive on time?  Was it of good quality?  Worth the cost?  Did the company resolve any problems?  Would the reviewer buy from this seller again?  Answers to questions like these interest me.

I don't know that I'll start paying any more attention to commentary on news articles as a result of looking into Social Networking, but obviously loads of people love it, choosing to spend their time composing it and reading it.

Clearly I must be antisocial.

MIXX

Mixx more closely resembled Digg and Reddit, being less slick and polished-looking than Newsvine.  The tour was simple enough.

On the homepage, I read an article entitled "Does Daylight Saving Time Conserve Energy?"  I didn't feel strongly enough to vote or leave a comment.

The article entitled "School Lunch Nutrition Standards Haven't Been Updated in 30 Years" moved me to want to do both--but of course, one has to register for a Mixx account in order to do so.

I therefore held off, determined to get through each Thing as expeditiously as possible.  Picking up the pace is what I'll have to do, if I'm ever to get caught up on 23 Things!

CHOOSING AN ARTICLE

For my article to recommend, I went to the New York Times website and navigated to the section on technology.  The article I chose was "When Everyone's a Friend, Is Anything Private?" by Randall Stross.

It discussed how Facebook's liberal default privacy settings encourage the indiscriminate sharing of personal information to any stranger who asks for it.

If you respond in the affirmative--as many Facebook users do--anyone who asks to be your Facebook friend can gain access to all sorts of information about you.

This is the exact same information you'd feel creepy about disclosing to someone you didn't know who just walked up to you out of nowhere and started quizzing you about yourself.

MY PERSONAL REACTION

I don't get it.  Why would anyone make private information available to strangers?

Being deeply private--any surprise to learn that I'm an introvert?--I don't really want to know that much about strangers, and I certainly don't want to share much of anything personal with anyone I haven't known for quite a while.

Whatever happened to the idea of building trust over time?

Perhaps this is why the thought of establishing a Facebook account fills me with all the pleasant anticipation of juggling loaded firearms.

SHARING THE ARTICLE

When I clicked on the share link, I saw that I needed to register for one of the social networking accounts, so I chose Digg.

Registration took mere moments.  The article had already been recommended by a couple of other people, but I was able to "Digg" it and leave a comment.

The process was actually quite pain-free.

ONWARD

Good enough.  Now on to Thing #12!

Thing #10: Tagging and Delicious

BEHOLD MY DELICIOUS NETWORK BADGE 

I am now officially delicious!

AN ENJOYABLE EXPERIENCE

I very much enjoyed Thing #10.  Tagging's fun, and I think Delicious is going to be very, very useful.

I'd done a little bit of tagging before now.  It's a great idea and no big deal.

I do get frustrated when the total length of tags for an item is constrained to a certain length (such as 200 characters).  I ran into that when retro-tagging all my blogposts.

And of course I'd heard about Delicious.  (Actually, I'm used to seeing it referred to by its pre-Yahoo spelling: "del.icio.us") but hadn't gotten around to checking it out till now.  I'm so glad I did!  

WHY I NEVER USED BOOKMARKS

Before now, I've never used the bookmark / favorites feature of any of my browsers.  There are three I use all the time and several others I use occasionally.  The reason for my reluctance to use bookmarks was simple: they weren't portable.

Since I move from computer to computer all day long--at work, I have the computer at my desk and five different computers on the public service desks; I also have a computer at home--it didn't help me at all that I couldn't take my bookmarks with me.

So I just memorized the URLs of the sites I visited frequently (or Googled them if I couldn't remember) and ignored bookmarks / favorites.

Now it looks like Delicious has fixed my problem.  I should be able to access my bookmarks list from any Internet-connected computer anywhere.

BACKGROUND READING

Once again, I found Lee Lefever's instructional video crystal clear, charming, and laudably succinct.

Brandon Connelly's "Several Habits of Wildly Successful del.icio.us Users" was informative.

So, too, was "7 Things You Should Know about . . . Social Bookmarking."

I also enjoyed skimming through the list of libraries in the melange blog on libraries that bookmark using Delicious.

SIGNING UP FOR DELICIOUS

Signing up for a Delicious account was a breeze.  The instructions for adding the bookmarklets were ultrasimple.  I added bookmarklets to five of my browsers.

Afterwards, I flitted around to 8 or 10 of my favorite harp sites and bookmarked them.  You can see them at http://delicious.com/virtualunicorn if you like.

Now I don't have to remember the URLs for those sites anymore or hunt for them, I can just find them via my Delicious account.  I like that!

My last delicious act for the day will be to add a Delicious network badge to my blog.  If this works, I'll insert it at the top of my blog just to give the beginning of the blogpost some visual interest.  Here goes.

Thing #9: Sharing Slides, Photos & Databases

| Get your Presentation Pack

SUCCESS!

I'm happy to report successfully uploading a PowerPoint presentation to Slideshare, then pasting it into my blog above.

I went about creating this blogpost a little differently than I have with past posts, though.  So I feel a word of explanation is in order here.

A WORD OR EXPLANATION

I decided to create this blog entry while exploring the slideshow, photo montage, and online database tools described in Thing #9, rather than waiting until I had finished the exploration.

I wanted to see if this would streamline the process.  (I'm not entirely sure it did.)  Anyway, it was an experiment.

Accordingly, I first blogged about the "Web 2.0 Tools in Your Classroom" slideshow, Zoho Show and Slideshare software, Flicks by Picture Trail, NEFLIN's Flickr photostream, and Lazybase below.

After I completed my exploration, I signed up for a Slideshare account and uploaded one of the PowerPoint presentations my department created a couple of months back for training colleagues outside of the Alachua County Library District for this year's upcoming Summer Reading Program.

I ultimately chose to upload the shorter, simpler PowerPoint of the two I was involved in.  This presentation that didn't use any of PowerPoint's fancy animation.  I chose this one because I thought it would probably display more clearly on the blog and be a better bet for a neophyte like me.

How did all of this come about?  Let's step back a little in time.  To discover what I was thinking as I explored the slideshow, photo montage, and database tools (prior to the successful upload of the above PowerPoint), please read on.

FLASHBACK: WEB 2.0 TOOLS IN YOUR CLASSROOM

I enjoyed this little (59-slide) slide show, although the default advance speed was too quick to allow me to adequately scan and / or read all the content on some of the more complex slides.  I went through a second time using manual, slide by slide advance.

I love the idea of social networking as an educational tool.  The quote, "Everybody and Anybody can collaborate, influence, connect, create, publish, share" holds a great deal of appeal for me.

The slide entitled "But Why?" on the benefits to connecting people via Web 2.0 (tapping into collective intelligence via collaboration, transparent delivery and instant gratification, a non-hierarchical / democratic information feed, etc.) was another one that resonated for me.

Blogging as a way for students both to better imprint what they have learned as well as pool what they have learned in a communal repository of knowledge struck another chord.

The slide picturing a scale weighing the main features of actively searching the Web for information on websites (older method) versus the newer, passive method of online information gathering via RSS feeds aptly summarized the contrast between methods.

I thought the point that by allowing users to subscribe to others' bookmarks, del.icio.us "Allows us to connect with the web resources of the very best minds in our field" was well taken.

Because I'm smack in the middle of a wiki project myself, I viewed the slides on wikis with particular attention.

I found myself longing for music and / or narration as I advanced through the slideshow.  Surely Slideshare and Zoho Show must enable an audio track to be added?  Let's take a look.

ZOHO SHOW

The link to Zoho Show in the Neflin's 23 Things blog didn't quite work, so I had to go to the Zoho homepage, but that worked well enough.  I took the tour, checked out the demo video, and viewed one of the public presentations (an inspirational, poster-moment style slideshow entitled "Finding Joy.")

Zoho Show appears to be gunning hard to rival PowerPoint.  All the controls look very similar.  I like the fact that Zoho Show can be embedded in one's website or blog and is entirely free.

Here's what occurred to me while I was checking out Zoho Show: I had fun throwing together a couple of PowerPoint training presentations several months back, but was stymied when I tried to email the presentations to a colleague from another library system who requested them.

I finally had to snail-mail her the PowerPoints on a thumb drive.  Had I known about Zoho Show, I could have used that instead and let her access the presentations via the web.

As far as I can tell, Zoho Show doesn't have an audio component yet, although I see that support for animations is in the works.  That would be wonderful.

Also, one of my PowerPoint training presentations used a lot of zippy animations to liven it up.  Without the animated transitions, the presentation would have been a lot flatter and less fun.

Okay.  Time to check out Zoho Show's rival Slideshare.

SLIDESHARE

Aha!  Slideshare says right up front that you can "Add audio to make a webinar."  Cool.

And the slideshow "tour" indicates that you can upload PowerPoint, OpenOffice, or PDF presentations to Slideshare in order to share them with others over the Web.  Perhaps I'll be able to upload my PowerPoints to my blog???

"Create SlideCasts . . . Sync audio with your slides. . . ."  Virtual Unicorn is starting to salivate.

I see Slideshare's potential to publicize events and allow participation / voting in contests as immediately useful to the Library District and to my department (which hosts and presents a lot of programs) in particular.

These features could be especially useful in our push to offer more and better programs for teens.

Like Zoho Show, Slideshare, too, is free.

FLICKS & LAZYBASE

I have to say, Flicks by Picture Trail looked intriguing!  I see a great deal of potential there for commemorating Library events via an animated photo montage instead of just a bunch of separate, lifeless stills.

I checked out Big Huge Labs a couple of Things back when I used its Motivator tool to create a poster.  The Mosaic Maker tool doesn't excite me much.

I did take a moment to flit to NEFLIN's Flickr account to take a look at a couple of short photo sets: the igloo built out of plastic milk jugs (right here in our very own Alachua County Library District!) and the New River Staff Development photos.

I recommend rotating all the photos into an upright position before making them part of a slideshow or photo montage.  Seeing images that are sideways is a little jarring.

Lazybase looks interesting, if painfully simplistic.  Still, it's a way to get a simple database embedded in a website, accessible to anyone with web access, no database software required.

I might look into that one for future reference, since building databases is something of a hobby of mine.  I find them appealing because they put a large volume on  information at one's fingertips, uniformly formatted, comparable, and searchable.