Things in General

It is time to push to the end. This 23 Things got off to a slower start for me than the first one because it began at the same time two previously dormant large projects also ramped up. (A long-planned 2-week vacation in the middle of it didn’t help, either.) I respect the administrators’ decision not to repeat this program. It has taken me a lot of time to work on it so far and, therefore, it must have taken the planners three times that amount to put it together. Great job guys. Even if we don’t all finish, we have learned an awful lot.

Thing 34 – Is This Our Competition--Online Answer Sites

As a public law library, a lot of our questions come from the general public (frequently looking for legal advice, which we cannot give.) Many of these questions come in through our askalibrarian e-mail service. Sometimes people find the link on the court’s Web page or find our page (often our FAQ page) through a Google search. We had a question just the other day from out-of-state by a person who had found our information and hoped we could help her find similar information for her own state. So, in some ways Google is increasing our business.

The useful thing about these answer sites is the possibility of finding answers to questions that may not be in reference books. One can hope for a specialist in—or someone with personal knowledge of—your obscure subject to just happen by. Don’t know how often that would really happen. I was not overly impressed with a lot of the answers I did see. This makes Slam the Boards a great marketing opportunity for librarians.

There are specialized online answer sites for law. Just glancing through the answers to legal questions on some of the sites listed in this Thing, I think people would be better served by a dedicated law answer site such as FreeAdvice.com. The answers there are more likely to be posted by attorneys who will be able to give the proper caveats with their answer. (The answer to most quick questions for legal advice is “it depends.”)

David Lee King’s article was interesting. Most of the policies he mentions were probably written when libraries were just starting to offer e-mail service and didn’t know what to expect from it. At our library, e-mail questions are answered by the person on the desk. Very rarely do any have to be passed on to the next desk shift, even though people visiting in person or calling on the phone get priority. Did we know this would balance out so smoothly when we started? No. The idea of warning people that there might be a delay in answering their e-mail is now archaic.

E-mail has advantages over telephone reference. E-mail gives you time to put together a more thoughtful and in-depth response without having to break the transaction by taking a phone number and calling the person back. It is also much easier to refer someone to a Web resource (such as our FAQ page) in an e-mail than over the phone. Of course, it is harder to do a reference interview with e-mail. (We haven’t started any kind of chat reference yet.)

Thing 33 – Travel 2.0

Travel is part of the reason I am not farther along on the Things. As you can see, my avatar is still on vacation. So this thing was of particular interest to me. Having a friend who is an airline junkie, I decided to read the Cranky Flier. I was afraid it would be too industry-centric, but I found a nice mix of posts, from the efforts of the airlines to offer electrical outlets in coach (a great boon for business fliers) to video from an air trip to the South Seas (looks like fun.)

Igougo has a nice clean and uniform layout with ads pretty clearly marked. It tested the layout by picking Antarctica as a destination (a place I have been, so I know something about it.) All the options are there that exist for every other destination. Clicking on Antarctica Nightlife I found headings for bars, casinos, concerts, nightclubs and theaters—and was relieved to find them all empty. The site did apologize (“Sorry, we don't yet have any Antarctica nightlife reviews. Be the first to share your own!”)

The Twitchhiking around the World journal on MapVivo has to be the ultimate 23 Things Mashup, combining travel journals, Twitter and Google Maps (and don’t forget it includes pictures.) Peoples’ creative use of Web 2.0 tools is just amazing.

It is time to make summer travel plans, so, I chose GreenRoutes from the Mashups list. Alas, there were no markers in the Dakotas. Considering all the tourist destinations in the Black Hills, I was surprised. Guess this site is a work in progress.

Thing 32 – Google Maps & Mashups

Oh, good, an excuse to learn more about Google Maps, one of the most exciting new products on the Web. Also one of the quirkiest. A search for William Mitchell College of Law returned the correct address, but the marker was in White Bear Lake. A search for the Minnesota State Law Library returned an address on the East Side. Searches for the Minnesota Judicial Center or by our street address fared no better. Our street name—Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.—is a mouthful. Also it was changed in the not-too-distant past from Constitution Ave. Take a look at the correct information on my map, then try searching it yourself so see the weirdness that results. The map I made shows the law libraries in St. Paul. Maybe someone will find it helpful.


View Law Libraries in St Paul Minnesota in a larger map

There were some interesting mashups on the lists, such as the map of UFO sightings. Our library doesn’t deal with geographical questions very often, but it is good to know that if a map would make a good visual, we can now make one.

Thing 31 – More Twitter

Oh, gad, not more Twitter. After Thing 27, I was at the presence stage of Twitter, willing to give it a try, but that Thing took so much time for so little reward that now, faced with another Twitter time sink, I am in the denial stage. Twitter is terribly tiresome. My library, on the other hand, is in a form of the dumping stage. We are using Twitter in place of having a blog or press releases.

Personally, I see Twitter more as a black hole than as the big bang right now. Also, I don’t want to give the whole world “enough information about you so they have some sense of who you are as a person.” Haven’t we lost enough privacy in the computer age? We have shovel the rest of it out the door ourselves? Isn’t it bad enough that your FaceBook friends now have instruction on how to turn your FaceBook posts into Tweets without your consent? Do you really trust your friends to get the privacy setting right? And that 9 Ways Twitter Can Help in the Real World article? Admittedly some of those ideas sounded good, especially if you have a mobile device (which I don’t), but an equal number sounded scary.

I may come back and look at Thing 31 again later when I have time to waste, but to sum up, Twitter is not currently part of my social networking plan. You don’t like that? Sue me.

Thing 30 - More Ways to Use RSS and Delicious

RSS and Delicious (typists are glad they dropped the periods) were two of the first 23 Things that I have used the most, so it was good to see them again. I check my RSS reader regularly, usually just skimming the titles of most articles. That is one way to keep up; another is to be selective about what you subscribe to. I try for a balance between the two. For my favorite, read-all-the-posts feeds I also added them to my new NetVibes page.

So far, I have been using Delicious for the bookmarks. The most extensive use of the service is the one I set up for use by the reference librarians.






For my personal page, I have added a subscription for a few tags that I would like to find other sites for. We will see how that works. This isn’t an area where the keywords would be unique. That is the downside of tags—no controlled vocabulary for the subjects that need one.

Thing 29 – Google Tools

I signed up for Google Alerts to track the serial I am writing for the MALL Newsletter and discovered someone who blogs under the name of Conan the Librarian. (I never claimed the play on words was original to me.) Another alert looks for references to my library. That one should not generate so much traffic. Finally, I am tracking an ongoing research interest in case I ever get back to finishing that book. So far, it is retrieving blog traffic and things for sale. This could be a really useful feature though. I have used the update features on ProQuest and WilsonWeb to help me keep research projects and a pathfinder up-to-date. It is nice to find something that works for the Web.

For the other tool, I decided to take a closer look at the Gmail account I had set up for the original 23 Things. After setting a theme (if it is prettier will I use it more?) I tried having my yahoo mail forwarded. Guess what: it doesn’t work with the base account. Figures. I did find some interesting things in the Labs. Under Who Thought That Was a Good Idea? is the Default Reply to All. I know too many people who have gotten themselves in trouble by accidentally replying to all with a message intended only for one. Needless to say, I didn’t pick that one. The forgotten attachment detector, on the other hand, seems like a really good idea. I also added a couple more, such as the task list. If GMail really doesn’t get spammed, I may have to start using it more.