Old Friends

Signed up recently for the Fiction_L listserv and am enjoying the discussions about what a library should be as well as the attempts to find titles for books that patrons fondly but vaguely remember and the development of lists of read-alikes and books from similar time periods, etc. As with all these wonderful tools, one might spend far too much time keeping up, but this is certainly worth at least a quick daily glance (I get an e-mail digest).

Serendipitously, one of the recent entries was on a book that sounded mightily familiar, so I checked it out (God bless you, C. Burr Artz). The prolific Phyllis Whitney wrote it in 1957 so it's a little outmoded (the clothes in the charming line drawings are amusing), but still a good mystery for the 10-ish crowd. The complicated relationships in the newly blended family of the story still ring true today. That I remembered this book for, oh, let's say, 40 years even though it disappeared from my library somewhere along the way is remarkable. That "The Mystery of the Green Cat" held up on a second reading after so long is more remarkable still.

Phyllis A. Whitney wrote 76 books and more than a hundred short stories according to her Web site. To my surprise she died not long ago,on February 8, 2008, at the age of 104.

9. The End Is Nigh

Spent yesterday in the yard, intent on weeding the bed by the mailbox and planting the coleus and portulaca purchased the day before. Got appropriate tools from the toolshed, walked past the native plant garden, saw some dead blooms, snipped them off, saw some weeds, starting weeding. Threw clippings on compost heap, noticed ground was very dry, got hose, watered back flower gardens. Refilled cats' water bowls. Watered iris bed, noticed spent blossoms and brown leaves on daylilies across the side yard, tidied up, back to compost heap.

About two hours after setting out for the mailbox garden, I arrived and began the weeding/planting/mulching.

The same meandering approach characterizes my Explorations, but here I have arrived at last with my final load of mulch. If one is not in a particular rush to reach a particular destination, the varied and numerous offerings of the Internet and Web 2.0 can be delightful distractions. Eventually, the destination may be reached, and the original goal attained, but several hours could easily disappear before that.

This Web 2.0 experience has been good brain exercise and the guided tour most helpful in inducing a 1.0er to do some socializing online. In one short year, I've added to my world a blog, signed up on Facebook, opened Delicious, Google Reader, Twitter, and Library Thing accounts, contributed to a Wiki and a Ning, learned how to learn online and even created a pecha kucha.

And yet, I find I'm only partway to that metaphorical mailbox garden. The 2008 Web 2.0 Awards list contains enormous numbers of intriguing tools, most of which I haven't even heard of, despite hours spent surfing and sometimes drowning in the Web. And, of late, everywhere I venture online I am advised that my Internet Explorer browser is the equivalent of a Studebaker and should be traded in for a new model. I also frequently uncover the bones of abandoned Web sites. The BlogBib linked to in the last Exploration hasn't been updated since January 2007 "due to time constraints and the explosion of articles about blogs." Today I happened upon an old post on Classical Bookworm about the Bowling Green library's garden sculpture (above) and was adding the site to my feed reader only to find it's decamped for another platform. I have yet to explore tools to make use of my new 2.0 tools easier and more efficient.

So many Web sites, so little time... Thank you for giving me a push in the right direction.

8. Where Did I Put That Bookmark?

Great news! Del.icio.us has changed its name to Delicious. It no doubt discovered that with pe.op.le putting per.i.ods arbitrarily into its name, the social bookmarking site was tagged erroneously 90 percent of the time. But bad news for all my friends: Being now immersed in Web 2.0dom I will henceforth put periods after every vowel in my last name, which is a lot of punctuation.

The Delicious setup is uncluttered -- almost spare -- and simple to use to enter urls (though not quite as easy as adding to favorites). Being able to carry bookmarks around from backroom to info desk to home, and for patrons to also have portable access to their favorites, makes for a great time- and brain-saver.

Organizing by tag may be problematical for those who don't have a built-in taxonomic sense or patience for complete and accurate indexing (and really, with many complex sites and subjects, how thorough can a person be?). The Internet Explorer favorites can be neatly foldered, a more visually accessible format than lists of tags. Perhaps further use of Delicious will provide a better sense of how to organize the input.

Marking favorites for sharing and embedding the links in a blog or other accessible platform would save on a lot of e-mail sharing, which leads to its own kind of clutter.

In poking around for this Exploration, I discovered the academics a few years ago chewing over the virtues and vices of "organic ontologies." Elyssa Kroski in "The Hive Mind" writes that "the enormity of information that is now being published online ... make a traditional taxonomy and controlled vocabulary an impossible solution. The cost and the amount of manpower required would just be too high." Much more accessible are Clay Shirky's thoughts on ontology.

The man credited with the term "folksonomy" (though according to D-Lib Magazine, "folk taxonomy" goes back to the 1960s),Thomas Vander Wal, sounds miffed about the evolution of the term on Wikipedia. Love the irony, there. He says folksonomy is not "collaborative, it is not putting things into categories, it is not related to taxonomy... people tagging information solely for others ... does not get to a folksonomy. It is what Cory Doctorow labeled Metacrap."

In my test bookmark on the branch's unused Delicious account, I used the Library Success Wiki of the previous Exploration. Apparently this was not an original thought: 3,135 other people have bookmarked it. Now, in addition to Googling oneself, and checking one's status in the Amazon ranks, an author can see how often his or her Web site is bookmarked.

Another bookmarking/annotating site to peruse is Tablane.com: "Copy and paste web content to TClipper and store it as a web page. The source web url is automatically appended. You can add tags to pages for cross references."

I do wish all these things that will make my life so much better organized and brainier didn't so easily fill up my spare minutes.

Online Learning

Checked into the Brainfuse tutoring show-and-tell this morning. It lasted a bit more than half an hour and the extra time was mostly spent waiting for people to log in, fixing their technical problems, and repeating what was said for the late-comers. I learned nearly as much by checking it out on the trial link, in about a tenth of the time. Everything you need to know is in the FAQs on the Brainfuse trial site, run by Lyrasis, the combo of Palinet and Solinet created this year. And you don't have to listen to fellow online learners breathing into their phones. Mute it, people, mute it!

The Webinar used the GoToMeeting platform, which I'd never used before, and which installed itself on my computer. It was easily uninstalled afterward, but I don't really like being forced to install stuff. Did not have this problem with either Horizon Wimba or MeetMe, which is what Gale Cengage uses. (Wimba seems best of the three, giving much less fuzzy screen views and a generally crisper look.)

What I learned: Brainfuse started 10 years ago as a one-on-one tutoring company; it's been approved by schools in 30 states and its tutors go through background checks, including fingerprinting. The setup is similar to Live Homework Help, but the hours are extremely limited: 2-5 p.m. ET. They're going to be adding a Resources Center with multimedia content. A student can submit a writing sample to be critiqued by the Writing Lab. Online testing from K through adult (including GED and citizenship tests) is available. The Brainfuse instructor emphasized the Skill Building component of the site, which allows a student to pick an area of weakness for tutoring. The example given was finding the main idea in a story; there are many others in language arts and math. If the student uses QuickConnect for a session, it can be replayed. She didn't explain what "QC" is.

Mid-seminar the branch power and phones went out. Cosmic coincidence? I should have taken that as my exit cue.

7. Wiki Quickie

Between the library's Wikis and the LATI Wiki, I've had some experience as a user, but not as a creator. I need to learn firsthand how difficult it is to set one up, organize the content, and keep it from either withering or becoming cluttered and uneven.

Found the CommonCraft Wikis in Plain English video on YouTube but the video on the site linked to from the Explo blog is dead. That reinforced the WebJunction suggestion that librarians use Wikis for community-maintained subject guides, spreading out the tedious task of regularly checking links to make sure they are live. It's tiresome and time-consuming, but if a site isn't cleaned up regularly and people encounter material that is moot or disabled, it rapidly loses value.

The idea of a library community held together through a Wiki is wonderful but seems likely to get out of hand if the library is lucky enough to have an active group or wither if everyone is too shy to participate. Based on the LATI group experience, posting on the Wiki can get messy; we had a "virtual assistant" to tidy up the misplaced pages and respond to questions. After a month or so of questions posted in various venues on the site, she set up a single page for everyone to post their problems. It wasn't checked daily, however, and I found good old e-mail got more timely attention.

Collaborative efforts on the Wiki also were messy. On one project involving four people, we ended up with a hodgepodge of formats and fonts. Attempts at consistency were foiled by the clumsy editing tools. In sum, for an attractive, current and useful Wiki, someone -- or three -- will have to be on top of it all the time. Not easy amid staff cutbacks.

One useful feature of Wikis is that a frequent visitor can have alerts sent via e-mail hourly, daily or less frequently to learn of updates without having to revisit the site constantly. A quick scan of the e-mail tells whether the changes are worth taking a trip to the Wiki.

Am glad to learn of the Library Success Wiki, which I may have come upon before but now that I've spent some time with it, I've bookmarked it. Also am studying the "Blog or wiki" article I found through a link on the New Tech wiki, as I consider the best platform for an enviro-librarian community.

Oxymoron Insect

The garden has been home to several of these shimmery beauties this year (click on picture to enlarge). This is the first blue one I spotted; the others were greenish. I don't recall seeing any in years past, though dragonflies and mayflies are regular visitors. Not knowing exactly what this one was I went to, where else?, Google Images. Not knowing what to call it, I typed in "insect two black wings blue body" and up came a helpful site from the U.K. Seems this insect likes water, and this year was a great one for wet.

What is it? A male damselfly. Which is rather like being a "female dudefly." I think he should be called Superfly.

And what's this got to do with Web 2.0, or libraries? Well, I've been thinking about gardens a lot this year and in the process of thinking about a rain garden for faraway branch, I've talked to many knowledgeable and enthusiastic librarians. As an offshoot of my LATI project and at the suggestion of the Most Esteemed SDC, I hope to kickoff a blog or Wiki or other platform for the eco-minded librarian. We would share programming ideas, contacts, frustrations, successes and maybe even lend a helping shovel where needed. If you have contributions or want to discuss, I will come out from behind my nom de plume...

6.66 Mo' Zoho

"In this new version of Zoho Show, dubbed Zoho Show 2.0, we have focused mainly on improving the editing capabilities of your presentations which actually matches that of its desktop counterparts."

Would that my work were self-editing. Would that subject/verb agreement be fixed by spell-checker or, better yet, by human bean. Happy do not have to diagram Zoho sentence.

Just got comfortable with the Olde PowerPoint, so not finding this difficult but where is the Help on this program? Zoho Sho' is good in a pinch, I suppose, but seems to lack animation and sound. I do like the template patterns and there are a lot of shapes to choose from. Insert picture from file didn't work so I copied and pasted ... "Save as pdf" is helpful for sending by e-mail; saves step of going to pdf converter. "Share" options seem to have changed in the past year, so am not sure my supervisor will be able to see it without having a Zoho account. Hmmmm. Maybe that's their plan...

Had screen problem other 2.0 bloggers mentioned. If anyone knows how to fix it, please advise. When in Zoho Show the top bar disappeared and there was no visible sign-out button or other way to navigate within the site. Slide show embedded easily in the blog, which is kinda cool.

6.33 Zoho Sheet. 'Nuff said.

Having had little experience with Excel or other spreadsheets, I had little success at first with this part of the assignment. I tried to enter the formula for totals but having never done so in any program, I didn't know how to do it here. And there was no Help visible, except as part of the pull-down on the macros. Finally by trial and error I made a simple x + x/y formula work. The more complicated algebraic equation I actually needed didn't compute. Neither the intro window nor the user group provided the basic help I needed. Might do better searching for help on Google...

One tidbit picked up from the Zoho info is that it now has a "throwaway sheet" that a user can create and bookmark or export without having to log in or register on the site. Nice for people suffering from password forgetfulness. Elated to see Zoho products are now available in Esperanto. Eagerly await first opportunity to inform patron of this.

6. Head in the Cloud, Chance of Rain

Wortklauberlein

July 2, 2009

I am now writing a paragraph from the traditional left side of the page in Zoho Writer. This is a promising word processor with good editing functions and it appears easier to control than Word, which is always trying to tell me what to do. Word would have driven e.e. cummings mad.

Excellent Thing is that the program retains an accessible history of each document, just like on the old editing software at unnamed MSM of yore. And being able to write in page-view mode gets around the annoyingness of the PB Wiki, which kicks you out of edit and into page view each time you save. Then you have to go back into edit. "Tags as folders" -- the feature that files your document by tag and not into a specific folder -- is helpful for those of us in Deweyland who find organization somewhat tedious on the inputting end. And offline use is wonderful for students who can't always get a fast connection. Love user forums -- so much better at answering questions than Help.

All in all I can easily see recommending this to patrons who don't have a computer at home and can't always finish a document before the computer is nabbed by the next in line. It also might be helpful when 5 o'clock rolls around and there's just a little left to do on something but the doors are about to be locked. With the online option, the work could be quickly completed at home.

Two quibbles: There are so many internal windows that this doesn't fit on my backroom screen and yet I can't seem to scroll up and down the page. Also the view window is small, which can be annoying for long-winded writers. Working in Writer instead of from your personal Zoho page eliminates some of the clutter, but the view is different on different computers. Annoying.

The picture was easy to import and size. Don't know where my "alternate" (alternative?) text might have gone. It was something like "How an octopus feels after a day spent at the computer."

• Kitty
• Wuz
• Molly
• Tommy
• Holly

Pages	P1	P2	P3	P4
Carts: Fiction	12	10	5	1
Nonfiction	14	9	9	8
JP/J/JE	8	5	5	2

The font function in the table was erratic, not always upsizing when instructed, and the cells and rows can't be adjusted by clicking on the borders. When I published it from Zoho to Blogger it lost its lovely colors.

Will try the Zoho spreadsheet.