End of the Road

Last summer I eagerly began working through a series of Web 2.0 tools to see what I could discover about those tools. Since those lovely days in early July, I have had an insufferable cold (late July), lost an employee to the Grim Reaper (early September), began holding major responsibilities with the Faculty Senate (the Committee on Committees and the Welfacre Committee; the last named includes automatic membership on the Benefits Committee, and THAT Committee has very serious charges to meet, including changes to the university benefits). These responsibilities have taken so much of my time (in addition to my job, which I love), that I have no time left for Web 2.0. So, someday I hope to complete the lessons; I certainly intend to keep up with these tools.

Here's my positive, professional, public comments about blogs, wikis, and so forth:

What great tools for libraries. Photos of your library on Flickr. Wikis for librarians. Blogs for librarians. LibraryThing as a potential tool for collection development. RSS feeds for information about the profession. Podcasts for teaching. There's a wealth of tools to use, and libraries and librarians would be foolish indeed not to take advantage of these resources for however long they exist -- for they could easily morph into something else within a few years.

Here's my other take on Web 2.0 tools:

I feel overwhelmed by the number of accounts I now have, and by the amount of information at my fingertips. Maybe I don't want all this information. Maybe I want to curl up on the sofa with a cat and cup of tea and read Dickens instead of going through all these accounts and gathering all this information that may or may not be of value to me. Do I want to spend my time doing this? That's my first point -- I feel like this is just too much information. And I am excluding my listservs on libraries and personal email and the listserv about birds. (And I tried a listserv on banjos once -- don't do it!!!! Practice instead!) So there's those resources. And then, gee, there's snail mail. Mostly junk, but still I have to sort through that too. (And magazines and professinal journals -- gosh, I wish C&RL News would go online. But I digress.)

My other point and this is the final one and the most important one is simply that I'm a private person, and I don't really want to put out that much information on the web where it can be read and seen. This is just me, and it doesn't matter if I'm 31 or 41 or 51 or 61 -- it's just me at this juncture in my life. I have discovered that I do like to post photos on Flickr (ok, there's just a few, but I want to put up more) and I like Library Thing, and opened an account for that a year ago. I remain ambivalant about FaceBook -- not sure I want to be there, but like being there. Otherwise, I really don't care much for sharing my life online. (If I were 21, I would sing a different song, but I'm not.) My final concern is that Web 2.0 takes a lot of my time, and when I do have time, I really prefer to -- well, not read Dickens, but play the piano. I bought a baby grand over a year ago, and I like to commune with it daily if possible. So I can spend my time with Beethoven and Schumann and Chopin or I can blog. (Yes, I could blog about those dead guys, and about when I get into my Duke Ellington mood, but then I wouldn't be PLAYING the Duke or anyone else, would I? I'd be busy blogging.)

For anyone reading through this, remember there's a line drawn here: what I think about Web 2.0 as a set of tools for libraries (more cool ways to serve our users!) and what I think about Web 2.0 personally -- it's just not quite for me. At least not yet. There may come a day when I'll make a podcast of a Beethoven sonata or put up a video on YouTube of my "great" rendition of "Satin Doll." Maybe.

So, auf wiedersehen for now. But for those of you in the library -- use these tools. We're here to help our users, and Web 2.0 is one of the most exciting ways to help users these days! Bravo, Web 2.0!

Back to Blogging; Charleston conference

A short note. Here it is, almost time for snow, and I have not blogged since the dog days of August. The fall semester began with a bang, one of my team leaders passed away, and I have been busy with her job and mine. Plus there have been meetings, including the usual great conference in Charleston.

Speaking of the Charleston conference, a wonderful skit spoofing Second Life was performed during one of the plenary sessions. This was definitely a welcome moment of comic relief, for there were many good sessions -- and many intense sessions -- about the future of libraries. One speaker stated the bibliographic instruction is dead. Another speaker stated that we should concentrate on teaching. So where does the truth lie? Anyway, there was much fine food for the belly, and much food for thought during the Charleston conference.

LibraryThing

Today I'm back to LibraryThing -- I say back, because I played with LibraryThing sometime last fall -- but for this adventure into social networking, I've chosen to start a new LibraryThing account. Being a book person, I like LibraryThing, so it has been a pleasure to return to the site and play around with this tool again. If I get around to being social, it will be through this particular social networking resource.

Here's my LibraryThing address: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Maggie_Foote

In my return to LibraryThing, I've enjoyed the tag clouds and the book covers -- they are pretty darn nifty.

At some point, though, I wonder if I should select a few library books for LibraryThing, that concern technical services librarians. Could one pull together such a subset on LibraryThing? And how can you socialize on such dry writing? Let's face it -- Chan's book on subject headings doesn't exactly rival Harry Potter as a riveting read. Maybe LibraryThing is of greater value for public services librarians in public libraries, or just for book lovers in general. Like me, who thinks this thing is just too cool.

Maintaining my Irish theme, I do have one title on the list, Anam Cara. The rest are either on books or on music. I do plan to continue adding titles to the list, slowly but surely.

RSS feeds again

A hot summer afternoon, the perfect time to examine RSS feeds one last time -- no interruptions, no need to hurry home in the heat, a time to relax.

I've now explored syndic8, feedstar, and topix.net. I know about Technorati. I have a Bloglines account and a Google Reader account. All of these tools are easy to navigate. I see the potential for libraries, for professors, for the ordinary soul on the street.

And for the most part -- I don't need any of them. I feel deluged with information already. Some of these tools provide me with such trivial information about sports and entertainment that I feel almost insulted. There's more to life than much of this stuff, and if I do want to know this stuff, I can head to Krogers and read the National Enquirer headlines. Or read People. Or read the daily newspaper.

As for library feeds? Just not interested.

Right now, for the sake of experiment, I'm getting a substantial number of RSS feeds. Eventually I'll cut them back to a bare minimum of feeds.

This should not be taken as a criticism of any of these tools. They serve many good uses, and I'm certainly glad to know they are out there, and that if I need them personally I can use them. I do not mind showing a library user how to use one of them. The knowledge of these RSS feeds is highly worthwhile. The RSS feeds can be of great value for others who seek out information for their needs. I can also see that there are a select few feeds that are useful to me personally and professionally. I just don't need such a glut of information, especially a glut of shallow information. I've enjoyed the RSS ride, and now I'm getting off.

RSS feeds

Time for a few words on RSS feeds.

I already have an account on Bloglines, and check it nearly every day. It's pretty good. For comparison's sake, I set up a Google Account. It was pretty easy to do.

Both accounts include library feeds, but guess what. On Bloglines I rarely check it. I look at the feed from the NY Times on the arts, covering everything from Mozart to Tony Soprano. Wonderful reading. I wonder if I will do the same with Google Account.

Because -- much I love libraries and librarianship, I find that RSS feeds and many other Web 2.0 tools interest me personally, but again and again I draw a line in the sand with libraries. Perhaps I think of social networking as social, unrelated to the profession. Or maybe I can only think about libraries for so long, and then I have to stop. Enough already.

So this brief paragraph concerns the lesson on RSS feeds, lesson 1. I'm done.

Flickr and Mappr

In my further adventures with Flickr I decided to put my photos on Mappr. In the 15 minutes I've chosen to do this I have learned the following:

1) Don't locate your pictures with an obscure tag. They don't know where Buncombe County is . I do. The first place I ever saw in my life.

2) Even if you try to make it unobscure there are problems. I moved a mountain in Swannonoa to Asheville. When I asked to post it on Mappr, I was asked to drag the photo to somewhere in Kentucky.

3) The map moves way too slowly to suit me.

4) In a futile attempt to map a photograph in Cumberland Gap, Tennessee, I managed to get as far as Hiltons, Virginia. That would be GREAT for my photos of the Carter Family home. Unfortunately, that's not Cumberland Gap, Tennessee.

5) In my lesson next week on tagging, I will emphasize clarity in the tag.

6) In the meantime, I will continue to struggle with mapping things. This is the second time I have tried to map a photo only to end in frustration. I have yet to map anything. This looks like a software that the brain dead could use, and I am brain dead from a cold. It and I simply aren't connecting.

Flickr and Irish Libraries

It's been a few weeks since my last post -- I spent time in western North Carolina at Warren Wilson College attending a Celtic week -- Celtic music all week long, from songs in Scottish Gaelic taught by the incomparable folklorist Margaret Bennett to marvelous concerts by the instructors. Then I come back to the library and promptly decide to try to die with a Cold. If I blogged I felt it would sound grumpy or whiney, pertaining to how I felt at the moment.

On to cool Web 2.0 stuff now. I have an account on Flickr! And a few pictures there. Two are from western NC -- no Celtic stuff, but a photo of Peter Cottontail, who cheerfully posed for me for 5 or 6 photos, and then there's a mountain scene there. This is eastern Buncombe County, and you're getting away from the Blue Ridge and into the Black mountains, the tallest of which is Mount Mitchell. Climb Mt. Mitchell and that's as high as you can go east of the Mississippi.

Back to Flickr. This is way cool. Since I have the theme of the Celtic world uniting this blog, I was pleased that Julie G pointed us towards library photos, and I found a lovely bouquet of Irish libraries on Flickr. I was quite fascinated with their exterior architecture. The interiors are pretty much your basic library look, except some of their stacks shelves seem to be on wheels in one or two photos. You can also learn the location of the libraries through Mappr, which I plan to explore further since I can spend hours pouring over maps (apparently an inherited trait from my dad, or so my mom told me. She didn't share the passion.)

Here's the url to the Irish libraires: http://www.flickr.com/groups/irishlibraries/

Young and restless social networking

No, this is not about the young. Nor is it really about the restless, although in middle age, I am definitely as restless as ever. But stay tuned. First, this note is about a video on YouTube called "Social Networking in Plain English." This is a great little video that gets the points across about social networking in Web 2.0 very nicely. And second, this note is about -- well, read on.

When I was watching the graphics about social networking, it reminded me of a classic example of networking that took place in my life years ago. You start with me, a freshman in college, and I meet a guy named Rex in the reference room of the college library -- and no, I didn't hang around the library much; I was usually practicing piano in practice rooms -- and Rex and I became great friends and still are. We found we enjoyed music, movies, and that when we were young teens, we were both hooked on Dark Shadows. Because of that show, he told me his great dream was to be a writer for daytime drama.

Fast forward to graduate school where every Saturday evening Florence, PhD candidate in music theory, and me, musicology student, ate pizza with sausage, pepperoni, and extra cheese at Joe Bologna's in Lexington. One evening I learned Florence had a cousin named Kay and Kay was not a musician but -- head writer for The Young and the Restless.

Hm.

So I passed along the information to Rex, and he was not too fond of that soap, and was doing work with autistic children anyway, and some time passed, and then one day he called me and asked how to get in touch with Florence (now moved from Lexington) because maybe, just maybe, she would give him Kay's address and Kay and he could talk. So I said sure, and gave him Flo's address.

Well, he now has two or three Emmys from those years on Y&R, and now works for Bold & Beautiful, where he has been nominated for several Emmys. It's hard work, with nearly endless deadlines, but he loves it.

So that real life example of social networking popped into my head when watching the neat little video. I wonder, at least where work is concerned, if social networks such as Facebook can forge these kinds of networks? Certainly I can see how easy it would be to develop some great friendships through these cool tools. Does it help careers? I can see that the potential is there for many interesting relationships to develop. One drawback though -- you can't network socially in a virtual world and still have that wonderful pizza with sausage, pepperoini, and extra cheese.

Thoreau and Web 2.0

Moving away in this post from Celtic themes because today, July 12, is the birthday of American writer Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). Thoreau is known in popular imagination as the hermit living in a tiny cabin by Walden Pond and writing his book, Walden. Not quite an accurate portrait. Sure, Henry lived there for a little over 2 years (1845-1847), and his journal passages written there formed the nucleus of Walden -- but his real reason for living there? He needed to get away from it all to write his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. He was being socialized to death in the little town of Concord, and so decided to go on a kind of sabbatical. He didn't just sit there all day long either; he hoed beans, visited friends, took a trip to Maine. Book draft completed, he moved back to town. A Week was published in 1849.

Now Thoreau was not a hermit, but he was not the most social guy in town either. He had family and he had a few close friends, such as the Emersons, the Hawthornes, and the Alcotts (Louisa based a character in her novel Moods after Thoreau). There were a few others as well whose company he enjoyed. He was choosy, though. in his social dealings. So -- if Thoreau had had the social networking tools we have today, what would this quiet philosopher have chosen to use? My guess is text messaging, instant messaging, and twitter. Why? Because, in the 1850s Thoreau was very much engaged in assisting runaway slaves to freedom. A cryptic IM message or twitter post such as "Let's have tea at Fairhaven Hill at 7 p.m." would really mean, "Meet me there; I'll hide you overnight, and help you on to Canada."

As a librarian, I'd like to close with this passage from Walden:

" . . . . A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated from every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself . . . . Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible artistocracy in every society, and more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind."

In these days of instant this and that, of quick electronic messages, of information that comes and goes, these words should be remembered and pondered.

Want to know more about Thoreau? You should read his works. Want to discuss Thoreaus and his writing? Well, there's the Thoreau Society:

http://www.thoreausociety.org/

"Only that day dawns to which we are awake."

Of an Ancient Scottish House and Information Organization

Since 1107 -- yes, 900 years ago -- Traquair House has stood near Quair Burn, a stream leading to the River Tweed. This castle-like dwelling for centuries has been continuously owned by a member of the Stuart family; we are now to the 21st lady, Catherine Maxwell Stuart.

I mention Traquair House here because I read an article about this ancient manor in the most recent issue of Scottish Life (v. 12, no. 2; Summer 2007) and was fascinated by its history, its brewery -- and the organization of one of its libraries. To quote the article by Richenda Miers, "There are two libraries, the first with an ingenious method of cataloguing the books. Each bookcase is named after a philosopher or writer, with the man's image painted just above in the ceiling cornice. On the spine of each book is an abbreviation of the name -- Pyth for Pythagoras, for example -- and two numbers, the first being the shelf number and the second, the position of the book on the shelf. The second library is an overflow, with examples of archive materials that is kept separately. Created between 1700 and 1740, the Library's collection numbers about 3,000 books and has remained almost intact ever since it was assembled." (p. 30)

Forget the second library -- I was quite taken with the organization of the first library! I imagined building a library in my house using these organizational principles. The library would be octagonal, with rich paneling, and furnished with comfortable sofas to stretch out upon. (For more details, take a look at Keith Richard's library in At Home with Books.) The collection would consist of American literature, and each wall but one (you need an entryway) would consist of a built-in bookcase with a painted portrait overhead of the author. Authors? Emerson (the quintessential American philosopher, who, I've noticed, is never quoted by conservative American patriots and religious leaders), Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, Thoreau, Twain, and Wharton. The seventh shelf is for strictly Appalachian authors. (Instead of a portrait, a splendid scene of the Blue Ridge mountains would be painted over this bookcase.) And all of these books would be organized by an abbreviation of the name or topic, a number for the shelf, and the positin of the book on the shelf. So, The House of the Seven Gables could be Haw 1 3. That means the Hawthorne bookcase, shelf 1, book 3.

My American literature library is all a pipe dream, of course, but the library at Traquair House is not. I mention this organization of the Traquair House library because of recently watching The Machine is us/ing us" by Michael Wensch, his fascinating video on Web 2.0. A theme of the video that leaped out at me (and others I have learned) is the question "Who will organize all of this data?" Good question! We've been dealing with this problem since at least Babylonia if not before. How many ways are there to organize information? There's Dewey. There's LC. There's the Traquair House method. And that's just books. What about other kinds of data? What tools are out there to do this?

But enough organizational talk. If you're tired of libraries and of organization, then raise a virtual glass of Traquair House Ale -- a brewery from the 18th century now back in business -- and salute the long-lasting Traquair House, 900 years old. And if you dare ponder how information will be organized 900 years from now -- then I recommend you drink several bottles of real, not virtual, ale, and stop such deep thoughts. Now.

If you're more interested in the house then Web 2.0, here's their addreess: http://www.traquair.co.uk/visit.html

If you want to go ahead and take a tour of the house, including the library, here's that address:
http://www.traquair.co.uk/tour.html

The Celtic Musician/Librarian on Web 2.0

I have entered the portals of Web 2.0 -- may this be an interesting journey full of fantasy and fun and may the perils be minimal.

For those who wish to know more, there is a video that I have now watched twice entitled "Web 2.0: the machine is us/ing us," created by by Michael Wensch, an anthropologist at Kansas State University. I find that anthropologist as author of this video, instead of a techie, quite fascinating.

One may wonder why I mention Celtic musician here -- well, I have recently immersed myself in Scottish, Irish, and Welsh music, and thought I would celebrate that fact on this blog. I hope to add a link or two later this week.