Thing 18: Videos and You Tube

This Thing was just plain fun. The creativity in some of the videos is inspiring. Now our little Flickr tour of the library seems old fashioned.

Speaking of tours, I really liked Winona State’s library tour—the whole library in under two minutes! The first tour of a library I ever wrote was a self-guided tour for the opening of a new building. We had a packet of photocopied pages with the text of the tour which coordinated with numbered 8.5 by 11 tour stop posters set up around the library. Each poster had the tour stop number and an appropriate cartoon. The stops were linked in the printed tour by directions such as “look to your left to find the elevator; take it to the second floor.” Think of one of those guided nature trails at the state parks. Once the open house was over the tour had to come down. We used a different version of it during new student orientation, but if it had been a video, anyone interested in the library could have used it at any time. One of the problems with guided tours given during orientation periods is the feeling that you have to tell the students everything. They won’t remember it all. As in any other speech, concentrate on the three things you want the audience to remember, e.g. the location of the reference desk. The Winona video gives an overview of what is there and where, which is all anyone will really take away from a guided tour. And you can watch it again if it went by too fast, which is probably not a problem for most of the 18-year-olds watching it.

I went looking for legal research videos and found this one that makes some good points. It is aimed at law students, however, while many of the visitors to our library have no legal training but still need to so legal research. It would be nice to have some short videos linked to our Web site to help them. Another item for my to do list.

Thing 9: Online Collaboration Tools

After waiting a while to get the permission to edit the Declaration of Independence, I think I forgot to finish my blog on this Thing, or else it didn’t post. Now I’ve lost what I had written. Oh, well, I remember that both Google and Zoho were easier to use than the comments features of Word that I used the last time I wrote an article with a co-author. He was in a different state, so there was no option of getting together to discuss the project. I can attest to the fact that e-mailing drafts back and forth can get to be confusing. At least there were only two of us. If I am ever in that situation again, I will definitely give one of these tools a try.

Thing 17: ELM Productivity Tools

It is always good to learn more ways to make better use of the tools we already have. At the time I was starting this Thing, I was also asked to prepare a bibliography, so I had a chance to try these out with my own searches, as well as the 23 Things samples. I set up an RSS feed from Academic Search Premier into Google Reader and it actually worked, at least at first. When it tried to update itself later, however, I got the message that it was “unable to locate” the alert. Oh, well. It must be the Web-based aggregator problem. This shows the limits of interconnectivity. As much as we would like things to work together, no one really believes that Jack Bauer can download information from government spy satellites to his PDA. The RSS alert I set up in Wilson Web to help me keep a new pathfinder up-to-date, on the other hand, seems to still be working.

It used to be only Westlaw and Lexis that could update your searches on an ongoing basis like this. When they first came out with this feature, we used to run the searches for the faculty. Now anyone can do it themselves. It is very useful while you are in the process of writing a paper to be able to keep apprised of new sources. Faculty who have a continuing interest in an area like being able to keep up with it on an ongoing basis, too.

Trying to use the Page Composer to make a Web page in the EBSCO host seemed clunky and awkward, while ProQuest’s Web page creation process was simple and slick. I used to think making notes by copying text into a Word document was the cat’s meow. Being able to create an html page directly would make it easier to place search results into a wiki for times when many people were collaborating on the same research project. Ditto for NetLibrary and their electronic notes feature.

Thing 16: Assignment and Research Project Calculators

Gee, it would have been nice to have had these things when I was in high school and college. It’s like having a personal coach who can also nag you with e-mail. I tried the U of MN Assignment Calculator with a topic of “law” and was impressed with the suggestions for periodical indexes on the topic. Another useful page was the one on note-taking. It would be nice to see tools like these created for law students.

We don’t work with students at my library. We don’t write college research papers, either. Because the Research Project Calculator can also be used for videos and slide presentations, however, it might be helpful for planning PowerPoint presentations, podcasts, or other media.

Thing 15: Online Games in Libraries

A first impression: The two game environments chosen for this Thing are at opposite ends of the spectrum in their look—from cutesy to creepy. I prefer the cartoony environments to the walking dead.

My second impression is that I would have spent a lot of time with online games when I was a kid. As a grownup, my first life seems to take up all my time. I did spend a lot of time with the resources on Second Life before eventually deciding not to sign up. (And it wasn’t just because of the download required. Did anyone else get seasick watching the video tour on the 23 Things page?) In the summertime, I can’t see spending time in an environment that doesn’t use all five senses. When winter comes, it may look more inviting. It certainly would be great for anyone with physical disabilities that limit their mobility or ability to interact with the physical world.

Seeing what is being done with Teen Second Life in the Charlotte and Mecklenburg County library was very interesting. I can see a role for libraries in these environments, especially libraries that work with younger people and want to reach out to them where they spend their time. Law libraries could have a role, too. As with deciding to open a branch anywhere, of course, a cost-benefit analysis would be required. How many of our users are there and how much will it cost to reach them? Will the branch drain resources needed at the main location?

It will be interesting to watch as these gaming environments expand and become more sophisticated and realistic.

Thing 14: Library Thing

What a fun thing. I may not be compulsive enough to enter all the books in my personal library into Library Thing. The ones that are out of print won’t get the cute Amazon cover pictures. But it sure is tempting.

I like the way the public libraries use it to highlight new books on their Web sites. We might consider highlighting the books we select with our public patrons in mind. Right now we have a bibliography aimed at the general public, but it is pretty dry. Because we are a government library, the fact that Library Thing has no ads is an important consideration.

Thing 13: Online Productivity Tools

So many tools, so little time!

I experimented with the start pages for use at home. (We already have a customized start page at the library that has the tools we use here.) Of the three, I liked the iGoogle best because it isn’t as cluttered-looking as PageFlakes and Google Mail doesn’t have the annoying animated ads that Yahoo Mail does. I tried the Remember the Milk and the Google Calendar, but I don’t spend enough of my life online to make these more useful that the paper calendar I keep now.

The Backpack suite of applications strikes me as reflective of the change that is taking place between generations. The current youngest generation that grew up with much of their social life online and who went to schools where all projects were done in groups will thrive on it. Their elders who were raised to work independently and who view the computer as more of a tool than a lifestyle will not be so quick to jump aboard. I was personally bowled over by the thought of keeping a journal page of whatever I was working on at the moment. You've got to be kidding, right?

On a frustrating note, I tried to make a countdown timer for the RNC in St. Paul in September, but Blogger wouldn’t accept the html code. Hope this isn’t an omen for the convention. I work just up the hill from the Xcel Center.