LibraryThing

I had a hard time getting through this Thing, mainly because I couldn't find the sections on ThingLang, MarcThing, and ISBN check. Once the links were posted on the North Texas comments (Thanks again, speedylibrarian!) I read the articles, but didn't gain much insight.

On ThingLang: perhaps it is useful if you have a lot of foreign language books (academic library perhaps?) but my limited experience as a German major in college and occasional cataloger of a Spanish book is that foreign language editions generally have a different ISBN just as a different edition would in English, so I didn't understand the need.

HTML and XML are more foreign to me than Marc, so I probably wouldn't use MarcThing either, but it is a good thing for those "outside" the library field, I guess. And I haven't done enough cataloging to run across needing to do an ISBN check (usually the mistake is mine if I can't find a record through ISBN).

However, that said, I loved the discussion threads on "Librarians Who LibraryThing" and being able to get recommended reads based on current books. I may even use the social aspect to discuss books later...

Digg

I found Digg to be quite an eccletic mix of news articles, images and videos. I thought that it would be more serious and intellectual than it was. Still, I found an article about the world's largest cave interesting, and I was totally sidetracked by the article "Ukeleles Have Gone Viral" when I clicked on the YouTube video of Jake Shimabukuro playing George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". Who knew that a ukulele could be that awesome?! After checking out a couple more videos ("Crazy G" and "Thriller" yes, on the uke) I returned to the homepage and was saddened that "Ukeleles Have Gone Viral" dropped down the page because it had fewer "diggs" than a video of a turtle having an orgasm or John Madden's 2009 football predictions. That the site continues to evolve that quickly (this had all happened in the course of about 40 minutes) made me wonder at the legitimacy of the information. Overall, as a library tool, I would probably stick to safer bets.

Delicious

Tagging makes a lot more sense, now that I've set up my Delicious account. I really like this application and can hardly wait to try it at work. After importing and sorting the bookmarks I already have on my home computer, I added "LibrarianInBlack" , "The Shifted Librarian" and Teri Lesesne's webpage for her fabulous reading lists.


What I learned about tagging is that a tag has to be all one word "NorthTexas23" or you end up with a bunch of useless tags like "North" and "Texas" and "23". This took some getting used to, since I am not a digital native!

I like having the Delicious toolbar across the top. It makes accessing my bookmarks easier, and being sorted by tags, much easier to find what I want.

Tagging

It makes sense in Web 2.0 applications to have some sort of organizing tool, especially if one has 100's or 1000's of photos, bookmarks, etc. I am not sure how tagging would work in a library setting, but it could be helpful to add access points to records via tagging. After all, controlled vocabulary only works if the catalog user happens to know the correct term. I see this often as a school librarian. Kids will type in "scary stories" rather than "horror" and wonder why the only thing that comes up is "Scary Stories to Read in the Dark".

Twitter

I created an account, poked around some on the ALA and #ALA2009 posts, but felt like I was intruding on someone else's party. So I deleted the account.

The most recent news item I heard about Twitter was from my son's college, UT Dallas. One of the profs there used Twitter in her lecture class. She had her Twitter page projected up on the screen behind her, and students could ask questions during her lectures. A grad student videotaped a couple of sessions and reported the project on YouTube, which caught the interest of U.S. News & World Reports, and was then mentioned in an article on technology.

Here is the link: http://www.utdallas.edu/news/2009/06/11-001.php

Instant Messaging

I created both a Meebo account and a Yahoo account, but never did get the hang of creating a buddy list. My experience with Instant Messaging is at my work, being the librarian at a K-8 school. We have instant messaging just among staff (no students) preloaded for us. I use it a lot for managing Accelerated Reader. Teachers will IM me to unlock a student, I can IM the office for information on new students when setting up AR accounts. Teachers also IM me if they want to make an unscheduled library visit, or check on students they have sent individually if they are taking too long. Sometimes teachers will ask if we have a certain book or books by a certain author rather than looking stuff up for themselves on our online catalog. In short, (no pun intended) there are many uses for IM for any quick, immediate communication between staff members.

Ning

Quite frankly, I just don't get this thing. Why do you need to create your own social network when you are basically doing the same thing on Facebook? I can see perhaps the value of setting up an invitation only ning account for a school or business group, but again, why use ning and not some other tool?

My interests are pretty mundane, and the sites I visited reflected that. The titles for the groups were sometimes the most interesting part of the webpages, as I found page after page of forums unattended, blogs posted with no replies, and groups yet to be formed. One library page had scores of tulip photos. They were lovely, to be sure, but what did they have to do with "reader's advisory"??

Time to move on to the next Thing!