Thing 20: YouTube

Thing 20 is kind of a freebie for me, because I am well-acquainted with YouTube already. I don't see many downsides to YouTube. It's fun, and often informative, and provides a pretty good platform for people to get their quirky, interesting stuff out there. Until recently, I had mostly only been familiar with YouTube as a place to view funny videos friends sent me, but since my ten-year-old son started playing guitar I have learned that there is quite a bit more to it than that. He does actually take guitar lessons in person, but thanks to YouTube, he's been able to get video instructions on how to play many songs on his guitar. It's really a great resource.

Similarly, I could see a great potential for libaries to use YouTube to teach customers how to use some of our more complicated services like e-books. It is often very difficult for people to wade through a lot of printed instructions when dealing with a new technology, and I think that video instructions, with screen shots, etc. might prove very helpful.

Below I've embedded a video recently sent to me by a fellow librarian friend in upstate New York, but which features librarians from nearby Virginia. YouTube in particular, and the internet in general, can make the world seem very small indeed!

Thing 19: Zillow

Winning first place in the Web 2.0 Award's Real Estate category, Zillow http://www.zillow.com/  is a really useful tool that I could see sharing with customers looking to buy or sell a home.  First off, Zillow allows  you to enter an address and see the sales history for that property, ie:  if you are buying, you can find out what the current owner paid and when.  Zillow also gives buyers and sellers context by listing what have homes sold for in a given area, using a map-based format.  If you're buying, you can also enter detailed search criteria:  number of bathrooms and bedrooms, price range, zip code, type of dwelling, etc.  Zillow could potentially affect the real estate profession the way sites like expedia and travelocity have affected travel agents, rendering them nearly obsolete.  Thanks to Zillow, and sites like it, any potential buyer and seller can do a lot of research on his or her own to yield very useful information about how to approach a real estate purchase or sale.  And you can also pull up information that would be useful when just starting to think about buying a home, like where open houses are in a given neighborhood, etc.

On the downside, just as most of us find Mapquest to be lacking something in terms of suggested routes in areas that we know well, it is easy to find that Zillow has quite a few errors.  All I had to do was look up my own house to know that I shouldn't take what I see on Zillow as gospel.  In addition to not listing the number of bedrooms at all, it showed an incorrect number of bathrooms, and couldn't account for things like our installation of central air conditioning.  They do have a feature where you can send in information about your home, but I probably wouldn't do this unless we were putting it up for sale.  Zillow's value estimates are probably affected by missing and incorrect information like this though, which compromises its value to a degree.  Also, when I clicked on the "view listing website," (which normally takes you to the realtor's write up) for one home that caught my eye, it turned out that it was no longer for sale.  So, unless or until Zillow can resolve some of these problems, I suppose realtors will be remain in business for at least awhile!

Thing 18: Zoho writer

Okay, so Zoho Writer was a mixed bag.  It was easy enough to create my document and to make it look pretty good, but I could not get the "post to blog" feature to work.  In the end, under "share" I chose "publish" and "make public," and it assigned my document its own URL (linked below).  I can't quite figure out what I did wrong, but so be it.  I am happy enough with what I have learned so far. 

http://writer.zoho.com/public/caitlin.mccarthy/untitled

Thing 17: Sandbox Wiki

Woops!  The sandbox wiki seems to be one of the things on 23 Things that has disappeared.  I can't seem to find a way to create an account, and the links from Maryland Libraries Learning 2 are all dead, except for the PB Wiki Tips one.  Okay, well, in an effort to at least somewhat do this assignment, I will link here to my favorite Twilight-related blogs:
http://twicrackaddict.blogspot.com/
http://www.robsessedpattinson.com/
They are indeed most silly and fan-girlish, but what can I say?  Even 42-year-olds need brain candy sometimes!

Thing 16: Wikis

Having mostly only been exposed to Wikipedia as an example of a Wiki before this assignment, it was interesting to see how many wikis there are out there and all the different uses to which they're being put.  Even though I am as guilty of falling back on Wikipedia as anyone else for my personal research, I still bristle at the concept of wikis for trying to find information that needs to be accurate.  I got my MLS in 1997, when the internet was still relatively unformed and we studied print reference sources in class and took the issue of their accuracy and authoritativeness quite seriously.  It's hard to even begin to explain these concepts to today's wired teens. 

So, of the wikis that I looked at, I thought that Princeton Public Library's Books Lovers one http://booklovers.pbworks.com/Princeton%20Public%20Library was a good use for the wiki format and that it was well done.  Book reviews and other sorts of discussion-oriented topics seem like a good use for wikis.  For subject matter that needs to be authoratative though, I am still mistrustful that wikis are the way to go.  Perhaps there are limited-access, moderated, or peer-reviewed wikis out there too?  A wiki produced only by subject experts within a field would be a different story from what I've seen so far.  I thought that the Library Success wiki about wikis http://www.libsuccess.org/index.php?title=What_is_a_Wiki presented a very helpful overview of the topic.

Thing 15--Web 2.0 and Library 2.0

First off, I have to say that the terms Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 seem just plain silly.  The very terminology belies the idea that this is a conversation taking place among technology innovators.  Instead, the concepts sound like the invention of non-techie, technology-awe-inspired people--which describes (or has described) many librarians.  I don't think that people truly involved in the world of innovation and technology would use terms that seem so imitative of programmer jargon.  So, there's that.

Now to the specific perspective included in the Next Space newlsetter and how they compare with my experience as a librarian.  I think the perspectives I read are relevant on a big-picture, long-term planning level.  In my time at MCPL I've seen great examples that MCPL administrators are thinking about these issues and improving the ways we reach customers beyond bricks and mortar and books on shelves--our virutal services department, our excellent website, the efforts to implement a books-by-mail program, innovative integration of and linking to outside information.  All of these are absolutely necessary for a library system that plans to stay relevant into the future.

BUT, the experience of working in a small branch library is an entirely different thing, and one that convinces me that concepts like Web and Library 2.0 are far from my daily customers' minds. 

Aspen Hill Library has two very identifiable core customer groups--young families and senior citizens.  Although children enjoy the games on our Early Literacy Station and our seniors are sometimes pleasantly surprised when something they want can be acquired for them electronically, neither of these are why they come to the library.  When their children are young is a time that many adults rediscover the library after staying away for years after high school or college.  They want to sit on our colorful rugs and read to their children.  They want their kids to come to storytime, to be able to do puzzles and play games, to explore our dizzying array of attractive children's books, and to build up the courage to learn how to ask the librarian a question.  And even better, once their kids go off to school, many of these parents keep coming back to the library, having become reacquainted with what a wonderful place it is! 

Our senior citizens want books: old books, new books, bestseller books, book club books, large type books, books on cd, all kinds of books.  They want to look at the Consumer Reports buying guides and investment information, and many of them, though by no means all, do NOT want to learn how to use computers.  With their years of life experience they realize that there are very few books they actually need to own, but they still want to read, and recognize the library for the amazingly valuable, staple-of-democracy resource that it is.  They also want to talk to a person, a person who listens, a person who genuinely wants to help them find the resources that they seek.  Sometimes they don't really need anything in particular and just want a familiar-looking place to go and some brief, pleasant contact with another human being.

It will be a long while (30 years? 40 years?) between now and when the people who were raised primarily with books and not technology pass on.  I am 41, and although pretty tech-literate and not at all technology-shy, I fall quite definitely into that cohort.  What libraries will be like--or if they will be physically at all--when the generation that has been familiar with computers since infancy hits its prime, I cannot say.  But until then, I think that Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 enthusiasts may be getting a bit carried away.  We have a vital customer base, people who, yes, want to use our computers and want all the bells and whistles that technology has to offer, but who also want a  place--a sort of "third place," to use Starbucks terminology.  Some only want the place and the books, some only want the technology, and most, perhaps, want a mix.  But it is way too soon to toss out the place concept and the physical books model in favor of a vaguely defined futuristic model of which we don't yet know how to accurately conceive.

Thing 14 substitution--Google Books

After not getting anywhere for too long with the links on Technorati, I started looking for a substitute thing to do for thing 14.  Although I originally went looking for Google Labs, which was listed on the 43 things list, I stumbled upon Google Books, which looks really exciting, and especially relevant for libraries.   Here is a link explaining a lot of it in more detail than I can here http://books.google.com/googlebooks/agreement/.  In essence, out-of-print, out-of-copyright books are searchable and sometimes readable in full on Google books, an invaluable resource for people whose interests go beyond the current bestseller lists.  Also, with library funding dwindling, which is making it more and more difficult to replace damaged, worn copies of older books, this could prove to be very, very useful.  It sounds like they are expanding access to other sorts of books too, which, if handled properly with respect for intellectual property rights, would certainly be a boon to libraries.  For high school students, who are very comfortable with reading online, this could be great when they need to read a classic at the last minute and all the library's copies are checked out.  Another use for works they have access to, such as Shakespeare's, is to search for a line of part of a line that you remember but can't remember which play, or part of the play it's from.  They also have access to back issues of all kinds of magazines, which makes physical preservation of these fragile media something libraries will have to sweat out less.  In addition, you can use "my library" on Google Books to build a list of books you've read and/or liked, post reviews, etc.  I don't have time at the moment to delve more deeply into Google Books, but I'd say it's a promising resource for libraries, librarians, and book-lovers of all stripes.

Del.icio.us--Thing 13

Hmmm . . . I am feeling more and more like doing 23 Things is like following a web road map of an area where many of the roads have changed.  Del.icio.us seems like something that seemed exciting several years ago but since has been supplanted by other, better services.  For example, most of the links about del.icio.us on www.marylandlibrarieslearning2.blogspot.com/, including the one to the tutorial video were dead.  Also, at one point I selected "show freshest" instead of "view all" on del.icio.us and the first link was from 2007!  I did eventually find newer bookmarks, but find the layout to be kind of uninviting and techie-looking.  I went to the sites of a couple of libraries that were listed as using del.icio.us, and their links and bookmarks appeared to be 3-4 years old as well.  I hate to make this the negativity blog, but do not see del.icio.us as a useful library tool.  In terms of serving customers, a well-designed, diligently maintained library website with well-organized links (which I'd say that MCPL has) is a far better resource 

On this quiet, snowy day at my library, I will try to do one more "thing" today before we close.

Rollyo--Thing 12

Well, Rollyo . . . what can I say?  I wanted to like this tool, but I just don't.  I can't see how creating a search roll serves any useful purpose, that wouldn't be served just as well or better by a favorites list or Google.  I have also found it, on multiple different occasions that I tried to use it, to be a very slow website, often timing out because it was overloaded with "too many connections."  So, after stalling at Thing 12 for far too long, I am going to move on to the next thing.  Here is the link to my Rollyo profile: www.rollyo.com/twibrarian/