23 Skidoo...Yahoooo!

*Whew*- just under the wire.

Well, the 23 nasties from the Dungeon Dimensions were, in the end, no match for Cohen's bibliographic broadsword and L-Space skillery. 'Twas an illuminating journey to be sure, full of perils and pitfalls but opening onto new vistas of electronic eclecticism...

Alas, certain encounters were more intriguing than others. Worthy of note were Flickr and associated mashups, RSS, LibraryThing, wikis and the various online productivity tools. And, of course, YouTube, which is, like, totally, uh, tubular.

In the "Yeah, Whatever" category would be Rollyo (a neat idea, but one whose functionality needs development), Del.icio.us (which, apart from the ability to store one's bookmarks online, I found mostly us.ele.ss), Technorati (*Blech*-norati)and, sadly, eBooks.

I can't say that this program assisted my lifelong learning goals so much as provided a means for me to indulge them. A lot of this stuff I was already familiar with, but the program gave me an opportunity to check them out in greater depth than before, if nothing else because it allowed me the time to do so. By so doing, the experience gave me a clearer conception of the direction that the Web is headed and a deeper appreciation of the broader implications of that development. It gave me a lot of things to think about, which is cool.

I think the program works well the way it is. By including the blogging element, there is a sense of not just checking this new stuff out but actually participating in it, and I think there's a good balance of leisurely exploration and incentive to finish by imposing a deadline. I thoroughly enjoyed this trip, and would like to proceed further as my limited time allows.

Verily. Forsooth.

Thing 22: NetLibrary & such

Well, can't say I'm finding NetLibrary to be of much use. Perhaps I'm doing something wrong, but the only fiction I can pull up is older; apart from that, I keep getting nonfiction stuff that has the author's name in the description, regardles of how I narrow the search. Weird, and I can't say I'd ever use it- I'm not a huge fan of eBooks anyway. However, I can certainly see them as being useful for high-demand titles.

As for audio books, I'll be honest and admit that I've never listened to one all the way through (but I did listen to part of a Jim Dale Harry Potter book just to see what the hullaballoo was all about). When I have listening time, it's music fer me. When I'm in my car, I either put music on or just think. I have enough information sloshing around in my head as it is, and the idea of hearing someone else's voice reading to me when I could be ROCKING or just zoning out strikes me as a bummer.

Nontheless, these media are important for libraries- even if I don't like a particular media, there are many who do and we gotta give it to them, however reluctantly. Maybe, just maybe, in the spirit of new tech, when I get my MP3 player I'll give one a try.

Maybe.

Thing 21: Like Peas in a Podcast

You know, it's interesting to think of Podcasting as radio come full circle- in a new form without the restrictions of broadcast frequency, non-replayability or poor reception. I suppose this is true, in general, for all the new digital media- they seem to represent a democratizing of the video and audio broadcasting, the illustrative examples of this being YouTube and Podcasting. As one who works in the information profession, the biggest problem I see with this is the age-old one of people believing something because they heard it on TV or radio or read it somewhere- a problem which is now translated into the digital age with the internet. While I don't see an inherent reliability as information resources in the new digital media (which is not to say that they cannot be reliable), I nonetheless applaud the freedom of expression they allow.

Anyway, I located some good Podcasts utilizing the three given directories. The first one that added to my Bloglines account was BloodCancerCAST, a podcast by the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society featuring teleconferences concerning adult and childhood leukemias, which is of interest to me due to my son's condition. The second one I added was Boing Boing's Get Illuminated, a Podcast featuring random wierdnesses such as the Church of the Subgenius, consciousness studies, technology and so on. After all, it's good to have your mind blown at least once per day. Finally, as a YA Librarian who seriously digs his work, I added YA BookCast, which features Podcasted book reviews for new and outstanding teen literature. Now, if I can find time to listen to them, I'll be in good shape...

Thing 20: I Tube, YouTube, we all Tube...

I'll say it: I dig YouTube. Like any other posting site, there's a fair amount of crapola, but there's also some useful stuff and some things that are just plain hilarious. Most of the use that I've gotten from YouTube has been in relation to music. You see, when my son was born I started digging around for relaxing music to play in his room at night to help him sleep, and I came across a CD at YPL called "Lute Music for Witches and Alchemists" by lutenist Lutz Kirchhof. Well, I've always had a long-standing interest in alchemy, primarily via Jung, so I was intrigued; we tried it, and it became our staple bedtime music. Being a guitarist, I became enamored of the lute, especially renaissance lute music, and learned a couple of pieces on guitar. I eventually bought an actual lute; however, technique for lute is somewhat different than for guitar, and since there are no lute instructors anywhere near here (or anywhere in Ohio, for that matter), I had a need to actually see people playing the instrument so I could get an idea of how it's done. Lemme tell ya, there ain't a whole lot of resources for lute; so I did a search on YouTube for "lute" and it brought up a bunch of videos of lute players! Yahoo! Just what I needed! I'm still working on my technique, but being able to watch pros doing it has really helped- and YouTube is great for guitar stuff, too. Considering how it's helped me, I could conceive of YouTube being useful as a reference tool for some things.

Anyway, the clip I'm posting is of Ronn McFarlane, one of the premier lutenists on the planet, playing some original pieces:


Nice stuff. Incidentally, my son loves YouTube as well. For a glimpse into his viewing choices, click HERE, HERE and HERE.

Thing 19: Blogger's Choice

http://www.cocktailbuilder.com/

Now this is what I call a useful site! Occasionally, after a long day of bloody intellectual battles and mind-numbing excursions through multidimensional L-Space, I like to soothe my brain with a cool, delicious cocktail. Now, I'm not a huge drinker (I'm gettin' too old for that crap), so I'm no expert on mixed drinks (although me wife, ex-bartender that she is, has some knowledge in this area); this site is designed to help chumps like me in their quest for an after-hours cocktail. Let's see- I've got some bourbon, some triple sec and some tonic water...what can I make with that? Well, just type "bourbon" in the "find cocktails" bar, click go, and whaddaya know? With that OJ in the fridge, some triple sec and the bourbon, I can make a Bourbon Rose! Sweeeet!

This site was obviously concocted by either a bartender or someone who really likes to drink. It's easy to use and the info seems pretty reliable. The design could use some help, though, since the site is not very eye-catching. I could actually see this being useful as a reference site, since you can also search for drinks by title and have the recipe at your fingertips. All in all, an excellent site for someone with a bunch of leftover booze and no idea what to do with it.

Bottoms up!

Thing 18: Zoho Chic

Zoho Writer could be worthy to act as my word processor. But before I happily bid Microsoft Word a fond farewell, Zoho must be weighed and measured.

Anyway, I'm writing this in Zoho Writer. I'm going to try out a few features...let's see, howzabout an image:

Now, I had a little trouble resizing this image- seems like sometimes resizing would work and sometimes not. Hmmm.

Now, let's insert a link: TXT

Hope that works.

I am somewhat bummed at the limited font selection, and I see no way to import fonts. And I'm not sure about the interface- but maybe I'm just not used to it.

Now I'm going to try posting this doc to my blog...

And it worked! Now I'm doing some touch-up in the blog editor...

The verdict? For what it is, Zoho rocks; however, I think Word gives a little better control (although it doesn't have smileys). However, Zoho's online collaboration potential is pretty cool- not having to email docs back and forth is appealing. Seems like each one has its place.

Thing 17: Playin' in the Sandbox

Well, that was easy. Added some stuff to Favorite Books and Favorite Music, and logged my blog. Nuttin' to it.

Thing 16: Wacky Wikis

In checking out this stuff about wikis, the thing that keeps popping in my head is the "editable by anyone" aspect. As a liberrian, I think I inherently have a problem with this; I mean, after all, isn't the main problem with internet info the fact that anyone can put stuff the web? But I suppose, on second thought, that there is a difference between wikis and ordinary internet pages, and that is the fact that in a wiki anyone can edit anyone else's info, which is not the case with yer standard web page. So at least there is some sort of layman's peer review going on, which may make info on a wiki more reliable.

However, I'm afraid I simply don't see wikis being all that great as, say, reference sources specifically because the fact remains that you don't know who's posting or editing info. For this reason, I think wikis are fantastic for things like subject guides, event guides, meeting spaces, even community journals, but not (in my mind) for hard, accurate information- except, perhaps, if the wiki only featured input from trained professional in whatever field.

So, bottom line: Wikis good for access to info, not so good for info itself. 'Nuff said.

Item 15: Library 2.0 = Mind 2.0?

Speculating on the long-range possibilities of the Web can be a truly heady experience. The myriad implications of digital technology in its various forms- which are all converging- are truly mind-boggling. It amazes me how accurate many of William Gibson's predictions of the technological future appear to be (if you haven't read Neuromancer, do it- after all, it was Gibson who coined the term "cyberspace"). We have yet to see the full cultural effects of all this, the ramifications of digital communities (as epitomized by the blogosphere, wikis, online forums, etc.) for actual world culture, since as the planet appears to get smaller in the digital realm, the distance between nations and cultures in the physical world- and even between individuals- just seems to get bigger.

The history of human evolution is puncuated by the successive development of new tools, which from an anthropological perspective consist quite literally of more and more refined physical extensions of the human body. Tools allow us to do things that we could not do given just our natural bodies (although the development of tools itself would seem to be a natural occurrence in the animal world). Prior to the digital age, however, the tools of humanity consisted of physical extensions; the computer represented the formation of a tool designed to extend mental faculties and operations utilizing purely physical means (we will not get into the ongoing "nature of the mind" debate here). And while the physical aspects of computing simultaneously shrink in size and expand in power- to the point of incorporating the weirdness of quantum physics- the verbal and conceptual plane of computing (as eptomized by the Web) is evolving. Being based on words and images brings the internet inevitably into the library domain (since libraries are about information, which is expressed in words and images). Words and images, of course, are the very tools of human mental life.

There is something very interesting going on with the Web, though, and this phenomenon has been given the name Web 2.0. The internet had previously been something of a one-way conversation, with people looking at the web as though it were TV or something. Then the commercial side starting gathering info on the surfing (and searching) habits of people in order to determine what they wanted, and the result was, of course, Stuff to Buy and Sex- which is what the internet has a lot of. In this sense, the internet was already forming itself into a reflection of the human mind, but the people using it still had an essentially passive, almost unconscious, relationship to it. The phenomenon of Web 2.0, which was bound to happen, can be seen as the dawn of self-consciousness of Web users, finally realizing that the internet is a tool to be used, an extension of their own minds- thus we see Web 2.0 characterized by things like mashups, blogs and other web tools, because it is essentially a feedback loop between the internet and its users.

Where this loop might lead is wildly intriguing, because the Web-User feedback loop is almost like the loop that exists in the individual human, between experience and mind- we call it learning. Can the internet be a pathway to a planetary mind? Can it "learn"? As digital media converge, will the internet extend into the physical realm? How? Will we all be connected to it? As Gibson predicted, will we have "brain jacks" to plug into a vast neural net? What implications does this have for human economic, social, cultural and political life? How about our relationship with the planet itself and other species? And, closer to the here and now, what does all this mean for libraries?

I think Wendy Schultz, in the article To a Temporary Place in Time, has the right kind of idea. I think ultimately the library will become as much a virtual space as a brick-and-mortar location. What bothers me, however, is how much the non-commercial, independent library will have to be sacrificed on the way to that goal. The purpose of public libraries has been to provide for an freely informed citizenry, because knowledgable citizens can make free choices at the polls, which is good for democracy (which, unfortunately, we no longer have...but I digress); Jefferson felt that the cost of these institutions should be subsumed by the government and not by private interests, since only in this way can unbiased info be provided to all. But now, since government is essentially run by private interests, I wonder how long free library services will be around. And with the cuts in state money, libraries are now forced to compete with other organizations for corporate donations, and corporate money is rarely given without strings. But technology is pricey, and we must make tough decisions as to how we use the money we get- technology is a tool for humans, after all, and we have to be careful that we do not sacrifice the human element for the technological one. As the Cluetrain Manifesto says, transactions are conversations, and you can't have a conversation with a machine...yet.

You know, I could go on for days about this, but I'm gonna shut up now.

Thang 14

OK, so I checked out Technorati a little more and it's pretty cool, I guess. Honestly, I find it much more fun to do a blog than to read them, for the most part, but Technorati definitely has it's uses, what with the 84 kajillion blogs out there.

Anyway, did the search thing for "library 2.0" and got different results for each search, which stands to reason, although there was some overlap between the Posts search and the Tags search. Viewing the favorites was interesting- I'll admit I figured stupid entertainment crap would dominate, but many of the favorites were tech oriented (boingboing being no. 1, of course), with a dash of politics. But the nod to good ol' predictable humanity was epitomized in "popular searches", where the "secret" sex film of a South American model was of great interest...

I also done claimed mah blog, and I have the widget on the right to prove it. So there.

Lucky 13!

Okay, I'm not sure why it's lucky...but it is indisputably 13. And it is Del. icio.us.

I like the idea of remotely accessible bookmarks. I have a substantial number of bookmarks spread out over, like, five or six different computers, and many a time have I opened my favorites only to exclaim, "Damn! That's on the Struthers computer!" or something of that ilk. This has happened so often that occasionally I find myself memorizing the search terms that yielded a particular site so I can re-search for it (as in, "O.K., I typed these search terms in Vivisimo and the site I want is the seventh one down..."). But no more! So, that's a deucedly convenient tool, right there.

The idea of user-chosen tags is intriguing. If nothing else, they give the user a sense of control over web info, as opposed to being forced to use categories chosen by a random site administrator or portal site or whatever. The situation here is kind of analogous to, uh, patron reaction to the Dewey system (or LOC, for that matter). While the Dewey system is great for the minute cataloging necessary in a library, it is in reality useful only to librarians, not patrons. So, of course, we put Dewey numbers on the ends of our stacks; might as well have notes in bloody Klingon for all the good they do patrons. Wouldn't it make much more sense to have verbal desciptions on the ends of stacks? Like in bookstores? Accessibility is the key here, especially if the library wishes to remain relevant in the coming decades. We exist for the public, not the other way around. Then again, perhaps libraries use cataloging numbers simply to force people to have to ask us questions...

As to the utility of Del.icio.us (what's with that name, by the way?) as a search tool, I have mixed feelings. I have to assume that the search engine on the site searches only tags (rather than tags and site text), which seems to me to limit it's use, since the only text you have to go on are tags randomly ascribed by users. This is not to say that you can't turn up some good stuff that other people have already found, but in strict research terms I would prefer my search tool to be able to search the entire text of a document rather than terms that may or may not be the best ones for describing site content. And, personally, I like doing the work of digging stuff up and finding just the right search terms to deliver the goods. I have to dig it- how else can one be a fearless L-Space navigator? Sheesh.

Thing 12- Like a Rollyo Stone

"You can roll a Rollyo to your pal/it's chocolate covered caramel..."

Hmm, catchy. Rollyo is indeed a cool tool, in principle anyway; I had a bit of trouble getting it to work properly at first. My first attempt was a searchroll that would let me enter a title and simultaneously search YPL's catalog, Amazon, B&N and BIP. Alas, the Rollmaster would not search the catalog or BIP- likely due to the database-oriented structure of these sites. No prob with Amazon and B&N. While that limited my interest in the tool, I figgered I'd give it another shot, and made a searchroll for guitar tablature (with the witty name of Tabby). This worked, but then I realized that most of the sites that I had in the searchroll operated by searching other sites for tab, which in turn searched other sites, etc. (the guitar tab community is somewhat insular). So I reached the conclusion that such a searchroll was kinda, uh, redundant.

So, I finally settled for concocting a used book roll. Though hardly the height of creativity, I thought, "Well, Cohen, you read a lot of weird crap that's hard to find new, so maybe this thing will come in useful!" You can see the results of my mind-numbing labor on the right.

'Nuff said.