Thing 39—Digital Storytelling

I used Scrapblog to create the following. It was intuitive to use, especially since I recently finished making a digital photo album of the pictures we shot in Egypt using another service. This would be useful for library events. In fact, if this were a month later, the link below would be to a scrapbook of a retirement party we are currently planning.

Thing 37—Photo Tales

We have a library tour on Flickr and so far nothing else. I used that photo set to create a slide show using flickrSLiDR. It was pretty easy to use. The drawback was that the text explaining what each picture was is lost. That is important for a tour, but not so much if this was a montage of photos from a library event. (We have a library event coming up, so that will be a good time to try anaother one of these out.) The upside was that the slide show pictures are larger. I noticed that one needs to be retaken because the artwork on the wall behind the subject has been changed since the picture was taken—a continuity problem we hadn’t noticed in the smaller size.

And now on with the show:


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Thing 36: Comic Relief-Generate Some Fun

ToonDoo was both fun to work with and annoying. After creating my comic it told me it was published and then it never appeared, so I had to do it over. When I went back today, the original version had reappeared as a private cartoon. The site has also been generally slow to respond and keeps logging me off. It must be too popular for its own good. Here is my cartoon:

Here is a good example of using the cartoon generator for a useful library purpose:
http://www.toondoo.com/cartoon/737442.

I am ambivalent about the Fairy Name Generator, too:
Your fairy is called Gossamer Moonglitter
She is the moon goddess's messenger.
She lives in spiderwebbed wonderlands and insect grottos.
She is only seen in the light of a shooting star.
She wears tiny black spiders on her dresses. She has beautiful blue butterfly wings.
Spiders? Insects! Yikes! I like the moon, let’s just lose the spiders.

The label maker is a handy tool. I made signs for our PCs and copiers. I tried the tag generator, too. Here they are:



The Free Printable Paper site is now on my Delicious list. How handy for when you just need one or two sheets.

Let me recommend the Hero Machine generator at http://www.ugo.com/channels/comics/heromachine2/heroMachine2.asp . I used it to create pictures of the main characters for the latest Conan the Librarian adventure.

Thing 35—Books 2.0

As a reference librarian, I spent more time with the readers’ advisory-type tools than with the cataloging tools. I really liked Library Thing in the last 23 Things, but I have no desire to catalog my home library. I usually find more suggestions for books that I would like to read than I could possibly ever get to just from skimming the print issues of Library Journal. Still, there was a lot to love here.

Book tagger, with its ability to create book clubs, is an example of the way that the social web can enhance the reading experience. If you lend your books out a lot, the tracking feature would also be useful. When I looked at the top page where Book tagger lists the most recently added and the most popular, though, I had to laugh. Four of the five most popular were Twilight books and the fifth was the last of the Harry Potter books. I guess we know who the users of this site are (and we applaud anything that encourages kids and teens to read.) The most recently added included two poetry books (and I have read that no one reads poetry anymore) and no NYT bestsellers. So I guess we know who else uses the site.

Books for mobile phones sounds like an idea whose time has come. Having one less thing (the paperback) to carry around would be nice. What would it be like to read on that tiny screen? Like watching a ball game through a knothole? I guess I’ll have to get a cell phone to find out. You just gotta love the idea of reading War and Peace on a cell phone.

The Kent District Library’s What’s Next site was able to find every series I looked for. This is a great tool that is now in my Delicious links. It isn’t that easy to create a series list just from a library catalog. Catalogs get cluttered up with all the various formats that popular books come in. Reading Trails is also a fascinating concept. I could browse through that all day.

Book Glutton offers that social interaction that the kids in the NYT article enjoyed. Talking about books with your friends, or even strangers, isn’t new but now people who spend all their time glued to their computers can do it too. Is this progress? I like the comment feature and the way it can build a conversation.

Bookvideos.tv seems to alphabetize their authors by first name in the browse feature. Ah, the machine mind at work. It worked so well for the title. I had to browse because none of my searches retrieved anything. Another work in progress, I guess.

Open Culture is another that is now on my Delicious list. I was intrigued by the language courses as well as the books.

BookCrossing is another one of those creative ideas that the Internet helps to facilitate. A cross between fishing and reading? Dunn Bros Coffee @ E Lake & W River looks like the place to go if you want to play this game in the Twin Cities.

As I mentioned, I don’t need more books to add to my “must read” list. That is why BookBrowse looked like the one to try. I decided to look for books set in Pharaohnic Egypt. Oops, that is in the members only section. Too bad. Too bad also that MetaCritic has decided to stop covering books.

Storyline.net is a great thing to recommend for those kids whose parents don’t read to them.

The Visual Bookshelf is nice for those who spend a lot of time on FaceBook. So is the ability to search WorldCat. With a public library right down the street and a book exchange in the building where I work, I just don’t see the need for book rental services.

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.