Kevin L Jones

Lesson #21

2007-12-06T11:02:00.000-08:00

I wanted to make a simple mashup using Google Maps, but I could not figure out how to get started with any of the mashup editors. The directions at Yahoo! Pipes and QEDWiki were simply too oblique to follow.
Addenda: Today (12/7), my colleague, NZ, got me started with Yahoo! Pipes.
After several fits and starts my mashup now works.
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=ZABRb_Ok3BGB7rsezKky6g

But yesterday (12/6), I chose Option Two.
At the Mashup Awards site, I looked at two global, real-time mapping sites. Filtering by category, I found "polling" with Ask500People ("Do you like your job?") and "wikipedia" with Wikipedia as it was being edited and where.
Fascinating.
On a more fun note, a very simple and award-winning mashup was Preetings. You can type a word or phrase, choose a photo, and then make a photo greeting card as in:
http://phreetings.com/trhmrr53
You can also make a photo mosiac of your Flickr photos using Mosaickr. Here is a low-resolution example:
http://mosaickr.com/free/e3926657b7e4b421ce4ba07fd23e63b665ec56d72816d7e929d2ff9f756cb25ff.jpg
In addition to these fun sites, a very complex mapping of your own musical preferences can be created at: http://musicovery.com/
You can then click to purchase your favorites songs from iTunes, ebay, or Amazon.com.
And finally, there is http://lazylibrary.com/ for folks too lazy to read a book longer than 200 pages!

Lesson #20

2007-12-06T09:08:00.000-08:00

Using the Mashup Directory, I used the search box and found a Google Map of yard sales in Bowling Green, KY from the Bowling Green Daily News. From the Directory (proper), I looked at a Google Map of the 25 most dangerous cities in America. Each city had a more datailed cliackable map that listed police stations and after schools programs. The directory listed a total of 32 local and national crime-related mashups. I then looked at a Google Maps / Fortune mashup that listed the 25 best companies to work for in the United States.
For example, while the entire entry had much more detail, this was the headline for #19. Alston & Bird
What makes it so great?
At this 113-year-old Atlanta law firm, hourly employees get annual bonuses up to 9% of salary, an onsite center cares for 130 children, and a few years back the executive dining room was opened to the whole staff.
Headquarters: Atlanta
Top 3 (of 5) U.S. locations: Atlanta , Charlotte , New York 2005
revenue ($ millions): 395
Website: www.alston.com
It would seem that any business or service would benefit greatly from having a GoogleMaps mashup.

Lesson #19

2007-12-06T08:32:00.000-08:00

I used the Yahoo! Podcasts directory to find the Slate Magazine Daily Podcast (at http://www.slate.com/podcast/). Given the paucity of political podcasts, especially interesting ones, I assume that podcasting will go video and explode, or continue to languish in obscurity when compared to its more popular Internet cousin: Blogs.

Lesson #18

2007-11-30T10:35:00.000-08:00

I love the old and new music on You Tube. As far as this black & white clip goes, it is not the best version. Still, "Crossroads" by The Cream is one of my favorites.
I think that the medium would be an excellent one for information literacy and library instruction.

Lesson #17

2007-08-31T08:36:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-31T07:10:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-24T08:59:00.001-07:00

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

2007-08-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-23T06:28:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-15T12:57:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-02T08:27:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-02T07:38:00.000-07:00

#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!

Lesson #9

2007-07-26T12:41:00.000-07:00

Basically, I found the Google RSS feed finding tool easy to use. I was looking for a feed on songwriting, and there were some that actually looked functional. I ended up subscribing to BloggingMuses.com because it addressed the most issues I find to be important.
Bloglines was the worst feed finder because it is still waiting for me to reply to a verification email that it never has sent (or ever will)! Agita!
For the library-related feeds, I really appreciated those that had an attached search engine. I looked for the feeds with the most hits for "library instruction." The Shifted Librarian had the most hits with eight, so I subscribed to it. (Librarian in Black was second.)

Lesson #8

2007-07-21T11:57:00.000-07:00

Discovery Exercise #1:
With 50 million blogs in the U.S., RSS feeds seem vital to manage it all.

Discovery Exercise #2:
I subscribed to Google Reader because I did not want to wait for a verification email from Bloglines (which has yet to arrive).

Discovery Exercise #3:
I subscribed to these five:
Chronicle.com - Today... (1)
CNN.com - Politics (4)
EKU Library Learning 2.0 (8)
Huffington Post Full ...
NYT > Opinion (10)

Questions:
What do you like about RSS and newsreaders?
They are an excellent gathering tool for those who explore multiple blogs.

How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your work or personal life?
For example, as the political season has already begun, these readers make it much easier to keep up with what the candidates are doing.

How can libraries use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?
One way librarians can use RSS is simply to keep professionally up-to-date.

Lesson #7

2007-07-18T09:43:00.001-07:00

My creation
Originally uploaded by qbfianchetto

Here is a trading card that I produced using Trading Card Maker.

Library Photos

2007-07-17T09:23:00.000-07:00

Here are a few library photos.

Flickr (Week Three) Addenda

2007-07-16T12:40:00.000-07:00

BTW, Robert "Billy Ward" Williams was a member of and songwriter for The Dominoes.
He co-wrote "Sixty-Minute Man" which, according to Wikipedia, reached #17 in the US Billboard pop charts, and #1 in the US Billboard R&B charts for 14 weeks in 1951.
The song was also included in the Bull Durham soundtrack.

Flickr (Week Three)

2007-07-16T06:23:00.000-07:00

This photo was taken in the "early- to mid-1950s" of the uploaders uncle, Robert "Billy Ward" Williams. To quote Williams' nephew, "Knowing the size of my uncle's ego I am sure he felt he was the star in this photograph." Who is guy on the right, anyway?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bdinphoenix/2257650/

Lesson #5 Addenda

2007-07-11T05:18:00.000-07:00

Observation: It is much easier to find specific people in Facebook than it is in MySpace. In my opinion, MySpace really needs to do something about their incredibly limited search engine.

Lesson #5

2007-07-09T09:57:00.000-07:00

Most of my colleagues seem to prefer Facebook due to its somewhat older age-orientation, and its privacy settings. I'm happy to have set up this account, and hopefully, I will continue to use it in a professionally-oriented manner in the future. Like MySpace, which may target undergraduates of traditional age, libraries can employ Facebook to reach older students, as well as graduate students, and younger (if not older) faculty.
As a side note, I must say that during registration the first couple of "read the characters in the box" were completely undecipherable. Fortunately, the third time was a charm.
Cheers!

Lesson #4

2007-07-09T08:55:00.000-07:00

I viewed the video, and I looked at the MySpace pages from the six libraries listed. I decided to comment on the latter.
1. Generally speaking, MySpace.com is a fun, socially-oriented site, but it certainly couldn't hurt for libraries to have a presence there. Still, a library's page must look interesting. A dull page is a turn-off to potential friends.
2. The libraries that put the Meebo widgit on their MySpace pages were cleverly linking their patron/friends directly to their services. In addition, a(n) (open) link to the OPAC, and a large link to the libraries' home page might also be in order on any library's MySpace page. A library's MySpace page can be fun, and still provide a direct route to people, services, and resources.

Blog Creation

2007-07-06T07:16:00.001-07:00

Wow! Blog creation was virtually painless.
My blog's URL is:
http://kevin-l-jones.blogspot.com/

Cheers!