This sounds like it could be a great solution to the password problem people had in the course:
http://claimid.com/about
About ClaimID
"We provide you with an OpenID which you can use to log into thousands of sites such as Livejournal, Ma.gnolia and Technorati - without ever having to create a new account or remember another password."
I am probably naive, but I'm less excited about feature # 2
"On your claimID page, you can create a profile of all the sites that comprise your identity. We even provide you with a simple and easy way to "claim" those pages - allowing you to easily prove ownership of things like your blog or Last.fm profile."
I think the credentials of the product are good, though: it was created by two doctoral students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Information and Library Science -- but of course I am biased...
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Week 10 YouTube
Youtube
I'm definitely on a home town kick today. My video link will be to the Thamesville Corn Maze where I spent three hours being lost, on the Saturday night before Thanksgiving.
Lesson Learned: corn mazes are a LOT harder in the dark!
Just when we had finally worked our way back to the entrance (trying to find the exit), the owner's son came along and led us all the way back in to the maze. (Oh No, I thought... not deja vu all over again!!! However he did lead us to the bridge, and showed us how to get out.)
btw, I'm not really from Thamesville, I grew up in Dawn Mills. But no one in Dawn Mills has a corn maze... yet. I'll have to talk to my brothers!!!
Youtube @RWL?
omigod, that reminds me of a Mockumentary a friend posted on her facebook:
CSI: Library Instruction
One video is worth a million cautionary notes... don't you think?
I'm definitely on a home town kick today. My video link will be to the Thamesville Corn Maze where I spent three hours being lost, on the Saturday night before Thanksgiving.
Lesson Learned: corn mazes are a LOT harder in the dark!
Just when we had finally worked our way back to the entrance (trying to find the exit), the owner's son came along and led us all the way back in to the maze. (Oh No, I thought... not deja vu all over again!!! However he did lead us to the bridge, and showed us how to get out.)
btw, I'm not really from Thamesville, I grew up in Dawn Mills. But no one in Dawn Mills has a corn maze... yet. I'll have to talk to my brothers!!!
Youtube @RWL?
omigod, that reminds me of a Mockumentary a friend posted on her facebook:
CSI: Library Instruction
One video is worth a million cautionary notes... don't you think?
Week 9 (b) AWARD WINNING 2.0 STUFF
This is a pretty cool site, and I'm going to add it to my delicious list.
It's interesting the Zoho is an "organizing" tool. I don't think I "get" Zoho yet. I'll have to browse around other's blogs and see if somebody else figured it out better than me.
It's interesting the Zoho is an "organizing" tool. I don't think I "get" Zoho yet. I'll have to browse around other's blogs and see if somebody else figured it out better than me.
Week # 9 ZOHO blog post
I will try writing my blog post within Zoho, and see if it's as easy to post to my blog as they say it will be.
Can it be harder than DOCS? doubtful 
I was excited to see there was a Zoho Project Manager -- not that I have ever used Project Management software before--- but if we get to be the next Bibliocommons library, then it could be really cool to have something like that available for all to use.
I am really impressed by Pat's slide showthat he posted in his blog (this is one advantage of being a week behind the group: I get to see what everyone else has done first.. )
And since I'm playing around, why not stick in another one of the many goofy photos of myself my husband seems to have on file. Now how does this happen???
This didn't work, sorry. The first time I tried I got an error message that Zoho thought the file had a virus. The second time, I dunno. Maybe there is a downside to free.
But now what? Can I email this file to someone who doesn't have Microsoft office installed? Will s/he be able to read it?
HELP! how do I really use Zoho. I don't get it yet. Jenny .... help ...
Week # 8 Wikis -- I did it!
I have wanted to learn more about wikis for a long time, especially how to make or edit one. I've been at several conferences where people like Stephen Abram have encouraged libraries to edit wiki entries, as a way of publicizing special collections the library holds on the wiki topic.
Great idea -- but I've never done it. Wikis have always seemed complicated to use. And yes, they are. The help pages really take some concentration.
But I persevered, and I was able to post a correction to the wikipedia entry about my home "ghost town" of Dawn Mills Ontario.
Would wikis be a good thing for our organization to use? It depends how easy they are to use.
For at least a year, I've been thinking of creating a wiki around Library Materials Selection / Collection Development. This thought started when I began job-sharing with Jill.
I set up a DOC (as in Hummingbird), and gave access to various people so they could read and edit it. (nothing much happened with this.) But DOCS is hard to use: you have to remember/guess exactly what someone called the doc to find it. You have to be logged in. You can open more than one version at a time, to compare versions, but you can only edit one version at a time.
Would a wiki be easier than a DOC?
hmmm.... I wouldn't want the Collection Development wiki to be public. So I think the login and finding problem would be the same.
Would a blog work just as well as a wiki?
People could comment on comments and eventually make a new post. Skip wikis, we could "harness the collective wisdom of the users" with a blog, couldn't we?
However, what I don't like about blogs, as a content repository, is their chronological nature. I would have to scroll back to 2007, to see the first version of my Collection Exchange guidelines, for example.
But wait, can you get around this by tagging your entries -- so all the posts about, say, Collection Exchange, would group together?
Obviously, I'm thinking out loud here. Does anyone have any answers or comments for me?
BTW, while I was exploring the Library Success Wiki, I found Thing 67: Stress Savers, and within that, something that might help end password schizophrenia [aka what username am I here and now?]. It's Where is Your Username Registered? Of course that helps only if you keep your username constant (or almost constant).
Great idea -- but I've never done it. Wikis have always seemed complicated to use. And yes, they are. The help pages really take some concentration.
But I persevered, and I was able to post a correction to the wikipedia entry about my home "ghost town" of Dawn Mills Ontario.
Would wikis be a good thing for our organization to use? It depends how easy they are to use.
For at least a year, I've been thinking of creating a wiki around Library Materials Selection / Collection Development. This thought started when I began job-sharing with Jill.
I set up a DOC (as in Hummingbird), and gave access to various people so they could read and edit it. (nothing much happened with this.) But DOCS is hard to use: you have to remember/guess exactly what someone called the doc to find it. You have to be logged in. You can open more than one version at a time, to compare versions, but you can only edit one version at a time.
Would a wiki be easier than a DOC?
hmmm.... I wouldn't want the Collection Development wiki to be public. So I think the login and finding problem would be the same.
Would a blog work just as well as a wiki?
People could comment on comments and eventually make a new post. Skip wikis, we could "harness the collective wisdom of the users" with a blog, couldn't we?
However, what I don't like about blogs, as a content repository, is their chronological nature. I would have to scroll back to 2007, to see the first version of my Collection Exchange guidelines, for example.
But wait, can you get around this by tagging your entries -- so all the posts about, say, Collection Exchange, would group together?
Obviously, I'm thinking out loud here. Does anyone have any answers or comments for me?
BTW, while I was exploring the Library Success Wiki, I found Thing 67: Stress Savers, and within that, something that might help end password schizophrenia [aka what username am I here and now?]. It's Where is Your Username Registered? Of course that helps only if you keep your username constant (or almost constant).
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Week 7 The Essence of 2.0 = Leave the Library
I like one thing John Blyberg said in the blog post Meredith linked to (the one where he talked about the failure of tagging in the Ann Arbor online catalogue)
"... when we use technology, it should be transparent, intuitive, and a natural extension of the patron experience."
For years I have been thinking our catalogue should be so simple we shouldn't have to teach people how to use it. Knowledge Ontario should be that simple. OverDrive downloadable audiobooks should be that simple.
It's not.
But is that the REAL problem? I don't think so.
I think the real problem is that we don't know how to tell people about the great tools we already have. Heck, at least 2/3 of the people who live in our area never use the library.
And the reason we don't know how to tell them about these great things is because we don't know what they need or want. We are so stuck in the approach of "you should do this, you'll love it, I know what you need".
I wish I could do what Pat Wagner says: leave your library, get out and talk to our users, figure out what they want, then start to build it. Her talk "Marketing as if your library depends on it" is the essence of 2.0, in my books.
I just wish I had the guts to toss the other things on my "to do" list aside, and just be Pat Wagner.
Another idea I liked:
The comment from Dale about the 70 year old librarian in the 1980s who figured out that non-standard call numbers and pasting reviews in books would work for her library's user group. Totally 2.0, without the technology.
"... when we use technology, it should be transparent, intuitive, and a natural extension of the patron experience."
For years I have been thinking our catalogue should be so simple we shouldn't have to teach people how to use it. Knowledge Ontario should be that simple. OverDrive downloadable audiobooks should be that simple.
It's not.
But is that the REAL problem? I don't think so.
I think the real problem is that we don't know how to tell people about the great tools we already have. Heck, at least 2/3 of the people who live in our area never use the library.
And the reason we don't know how to tell them about these great things is because we don't know what they need or want. We are so stuck in the approach of "you should do this, you'll love it, I know what you need".
I wish I could do what Pat Wagner says: leave your library, get out and talk to our users, figure out what they want, then start to build it. Her talk "Marketing as if your library depends on it" is the essence of 2.0, in my books.
I just wish I had the guts to toss the other things on my "to do" list aside, and just be Pat Wagner.
Another idea I liked:
The comment from Dale about the 70 year old librarian in the 1980s who figured out that non-standard call numbers and pasting reviews in books would work for her library's user group. Totally 2.0, without the technology.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Week 6 Assignment del.icio.us & technorati
I LOVE love love LOVE del.icio.us.
It has kept me sane -- what with using different computers at work, at home, and at Western when I was teaching.
Definitely one of the first 2.0 things I would bug ITS about. But it depends who else at RWL cares. Does anyone else like del.icio.us?
Thanks for getting me to check out a popular tag -- I had forgotten how to see other people's comments.
Ironically the one I picked was the New York Times new API service. Ironically because what they are sharing is their set of tags -- a consistent well thought out set of subject headings.
Doesn't this remind me of something???
Yikes, it's like letting people use the Library of Congress Subject headings -- at their desktops.
Technorati
I can't see the video -- it may be my husband's computer.
As I am currently tutoring an electronic information course for SOLS, I was fascinated to see the different search results, depending on whether it was a search of indexer-applied subjects/tags -- or a keyword search. Boy, keyword searches are certainly screwing up some of my students!
Would it be useful? Hmm.
I wonder if that's how Oakville Public Library and Bibliocommons found out I had mentioned them in my blog. I got emails from both of them the day after I made my post.
However, don't you have to register for Technorati to add you to it?
It has kept me sane -- what with using different computers at work, at home, and at Western when I was teaching.
- I use it to keep track of articles when I'm making up a reading list for my course.
- I use it to keep track of my user names and passwords for various accounts -- I keep those bookmarks private and encode my password, to boot.
- I LOVE IT!
Definitely one of the first 2.0 things I would bug ITS about. But it depends who else at RWL cares. Does anyone else like del.icio.us?
Thanks for getting me to check out a popular tag -- I had forgotten how to see other people's comments.
Ironically the one I picked was the New York Times new API service. Ironically because what they are sharing is their set of tags -- a consistent well thought out set of subject headings.
Doesn't this remind me of something???
Yikes, it's like letting people use the Library of Congress Subject headings -- at their desktops.
Technorati
I can't see the video -- it may be my husband's computer.
As I am currently tutoring an electronic information course for SOLS, I was fascinated to see the different search results, depending on whether it was a search of indexer-applied subjects/tags -- or a keyword search. Boy, keyword searches are certainly screwing up some of my students!
Would it be useful? Hmm.
I wonder if that's how Oakville Public Library and Bibliocommons found out I had mentioned them in my blog. I got emails from both of them the day after I made my post.
However, don't you have to register for Technorati to add you to it?
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