Lesson #17

How does the application you chose compare to word processing software you're familiar with?

Wow! At best, Google Docs seems fairly barebones to me.

What features did you like/dislike the most?

GD really feels limited and clunky. I don't know where I am on the page. Eww!

Can you think of any ways the application you chose would be useful to you or to EKU students?

No, not unless the student lacked the funds to purchase Microsoft Word for their computer.

Optional: If you're up for the challenge, try writing your blog entry in ZW or GD and then using the "publish" feature to post it to your blog.

Testing GD...

Post Publication from GD:

Awful automatic formatting. I really don't have any desire to go into html to edit the extra lines out of the post.

Ugh!

Post Blog Publication:

The URL is not lesson-17.html but

how-does-application-you-chose-compare.html

UGH!

Lesson #16

Which of these applications (if any) sound interesting to you?
Actually, the floor planner and SketchUp. While a bit clunky, these graphics applications could be very useful.
Which of them do you think EKU students might find useful?
The web annotating software might be useful to students who are using a lot of websites to write a given paper.
How important do you think it is for library staff members who work in higher education to be aware of web applications such as these?
I have no idea, but we should try to be aware of the possibility of (greater) funcationality for any of these web-based, freeware applications.

Lesson #15

Discovery Exercise:
Once you have edited or created a page, write a short blog entry about wikis.
It was fun to make a few entries on pbwiki.com software. I invited the Reference Team to edit "Favorite Restaurants," and I am eager to see what they will come up with.

How could we use a wiki in the library? At today's (8/24/07) brownbag, it was suggested that a wiki could be used as the Libraries' Intranet. Given some of the difficulties with SharePoint, that might be a really good suggestion. Another idea put forth was making a wiki of your presentations. If a number of librarians contributed, this wiki would have the potential to end up as an excellent information source. And finally, I think that wikis could work well for database reviews.

Can you think of another use for a wiki outside the library? For the creation of any document where multiple and diverse perspectives would be beneficial, a wiki could be a very good way to go. (Ex.: Brainstorming, priority setting, et cetera).

One major problem with wikis is those who have an agenda, (a financial or other interest), can edit the wiki to benefit them. (Ex.: "Electronic Voting" in Wikipedia). This could really distort what would otherwise be a superior document.

Lesson #14

I looked at the Library Instruction Wiki. It seemed to lack a helpful metastructure. So, I concentrated on one aspect: Teaching Techniques, Tips, and Tricks. It was unfortunate that three of the 16 entries had been spammed by ringtone and "prescription" drug peddlers. In addition, one entry, Wikipedia Excerise, consistently spelled exercise incorrectly. So, I created an account and corrected it. To correct this one typo required that I copy the entry and repaste it because when I edited the title, the old entry disappeared. Overall, the LI Wiki was not very impressive.

One final note: As usual, the Common Craft "Plain English" video on doing a wiki for four people going on a camping trip was clear and fun.

Lesson #13

Discovery Exercise 1: Tag clouds -- As a recovering cataloger, it just seems a bit suspect.
Discovery Exercise 2: Write a brief passage in your blog about the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness if you so desire) of the tag clouds in Encore.
Do you think the tag clouds will help our users in the future? The Michigan State Univeristy version of Encore was claen in its appearance and easy to use. I was surprised in that these tags did allow me to drift to a legitimate topic. I wonder if students could also successfully drift.
Why or why not? So, as the algorithms improve, these tags may become genuinely helpful to students trying to pick a topic and/or find materials.
If you teach classes, how do you see yourself teaching undergraduates about tag clouds?
Not yet--I need to play some more with them.
Discovery Exercise 3:
Is this [del.icio.us] a useful tool for you personally? No. For example, for teaching chess, there aren't enough relevant bookmarks. And the search engine was so incredibly slow that I had originally thought that there was nothing on songwriting.
Can you see its value in teaching a class? Not really.
How would del.icio.us be beneficial for the library? I think that there would have to be a large number of bookmarks on a topic before the tagging would become useful to a library and helpful to patrons.
Discovery Exercise 4:
1. Pause to admire the gorgeous tag cloud on this page. Lots about politicos, hurricanes, and Michael Vick.
2. Once you have finished admiring the cloud, search for your own blog using their search box. I could not find it. Nothing on songwriting. Found one of the Polgar sisters chess blog, but the search contained a bunch of unrelated, non-chess junk--even on the first page of results. It is ironic that many of these Web 2.0 sites seem to have such poor search engines.

Lesson #12

EXERCISE I.
1. Go to Google and type in a topic that interests you. See how many hits you retrieve.
I chose Songwriting - 9.29 million hits
2. Do the same keyword search in eQuest and see how many hits you retrieve.
Songwriting - 8 hits
3. Now search for the topic as a subject (or author if it is an author) in eQuest.
Songwriting (LCSH) - 0 hits
See:Popular music--Writing and publishing - 32 hits
Questions:
1. Can you see a parallel between the catalog and tagging in Web. 2.0?
LCHS may be linguistically awkward and unnatural. In contrast, tags are usually too general and they are completely lacking in control (there is no way to even group singular and plural tags--much less synonyms).
2. Do you think tagging is a reinvention of library cataloging? Or, do you think that tagging is a continuation of tradition of library catalogs, but an expansion of that tradition into new and exciting possibilities?
No to both.
3. Or, do you see another angle to tagging?
I think that tagging a la flickr, photobucket, etc. is, generally speaking, an uncontrolled mess.

EXERCISE II.
1. Review the tags in your blog, in Flickr and in Library Thing. Think about the terms you have used. Having learned a little more about tagging, consider changing your tags to make them more searchable. You may even want to add more tags. For instance, in case you haven’t noticed, Flickr allows up to 75 tags per photo. Please don’t be like the cataloger writing these words who learned that in traditional cataloging 1 to 3 subject headings are enough. Go wild with your tags if you want to.
But first we should ask: What approach do we want to take? "A." Do we want to set up general tags so that an unknown searcher may dig through a mountain of material to possibly find (and probably ignore) our photos, etc. Or, "B." Do we want to make sure that the people that we want to find our photos (etc.) can do so. Maximizing the number of general tags will not help us if "B" is our goal.
2. Add a few words to your blog about the joys of tagging.
Originally, I had tagged my photos with EKU and Libraries. Today, I added the tag: ekulibraries because I noticed that other folks at EKU Libraries were using this tag. Hopefully, this additional tag will increase the gathering function for my photos for the folks here. I really does not matter that much to me if other folks, with no connection to EKU, can find my photographs or not.

Lesson #11

I found Rollyo's search engine to be pretty awful (kitchen sink results with no easy way to limit them), so I used the Explore option.
Under their "Searchrolls of Note" I found "Guitar Tablature." (What luck!). So, I deleted some of the tab sites that I have never heard of that were listed in the roll, and added some guitar chord sites that I use with some regularity. I renamed this edited site: "Guitar Tabs & Chords." Then I searched the roll and it did great--but, then again, so does Google.
What potential use can you see for tools like this?
I'm guessing that one would have to rely on a fairly large list of related sites before a customized searchroll would significantly outperform Google.

Lesson #10

#1. LibraryThing was incredibly easy to register for (instant) and to use. I just copied the ISBNs from the Libraries' 13 chess books published since 1990. Especially interesting was a list of 20 recommended books that was given for each title in "my" library.

#2. Web2List seemed massive, so I limited myself to browsing the top 150 sites. The sites ran the spectrum from the simple and fun to the complex and professionally-oriented. Quite frankly, I'm unsure how to use these sites in a professionally-oriented manner. However, we're already using meebo.com which was #21 on the list. There were also several wiki-generating sites.
For fun stuff, Pandora (#17) was a computer-generated song provider. It seemed to "assume" that if you liked a Beatles song from 1966 that you would like all the songs of British bands from that era. I found it rather lame when compared to finetune.com with one exception: No Beatles on finetune.com (eyes welling up now). For wine aficionados, (which I'm not), WineLog.net (#124) has users "rate and comment on any bottle in their 10,000+ wine database."
Cheers!