TheCorey's Thought #18 - Thing#18: PBWiki and Jelly

This afternoon I did a bit with playing around with the Nebraska Learns 2.0 Wiki. As I'm still getting my gray matter to comprehend the nature of wikis, I may have missed out on the some of the truly cool wiki apps. The minor bit of contributing I did was pretty straightforward and worked just like the intro material said it would. Professionally, I would comfortable making contributions to ongoing wikis that other folks set up. Personally, I'm still kicking around some ideas where it may come it useful. Overall, it's a 2.0 thing I'm mulling over and keeping in mind for the challenges ahead.

TheCorey's Thought # 17: Thing # 17 - Icky Wikis

My own participation in wikis has been few and far between. We use some staff wikis here at the Lincoln City Libraries, but I haven't gotten the point where I've done much editing or contributing so far. I know its proved useful for many people here at LCL and it's more a matter of me wrapping my head around exactly what a wiki is: a quick and dirty way to create a website or site within a website or something more (or less?) While my professional use of wikis is scattered, I will confess that Wikipedia itself is a resource I have found very useful for many popular culture inquiries both professional and personal. Being a Star Wars fan, I have found Wookipedia (the Star Wars wiki) to be very fun and useful. I think once I suss out a bit more what a wiki is and isn't, I'll find it sporadically useful. It took me forever to switch over from writing out essays long-hand and then typing them up on typewriter to just doing composition on a word processor. This may be in the same category.

TheCorey's Thought #16 - Thing #5: FINALLY!!

Well, today I finally got around to getting Thing #5: Instant Messaging under my 2.0 belt. Of course, here at the Lincoln City Libraries, we've been using Meebo for some time to do Reference by IM with varying degrees of success. This was my first time actually sending one (Thanks to Allana at NLC for her help). I see how it could be useful, though it can be a bit touch and go getting the software to cooperate. For some reason, iGoogle never did want to load up properly on the computer. Thankfully, my AOL account allowed me to use AIM with little to no trouble. I guess I keep hoping this 2.0 world will simplify itself so that all of these various bells and whistles will work with each other with less fuss. But, like many things I deal with professionally, it is a work in progress. I can see it possibly being something I might use regularly once the process becomes no harder or more involved than making a old-fashioned phone call. With email, phone, twitter, IM and who knows what else folks will use to talk at each other, we'll have to see what the next genration of young folks come up with. Who knows? Maybe retro will become the new cool and we'll be doing Reference by Smoke Signals or Reference by Semaphore.

TheCorey's Thought #15: Thing #16 - Library / Web 2.0

I'm really going to have to rein myself in on this one, because this whole Library 2.0 thing is sort of a hot-button of frustration for me. I do believe that some good things will come out of the whole Library 2.0 debate / discussion / conversion. However, there's A LOT of garbage that will come along with it. To get to the pearls, we'll have to muck about the slope with the swine.

My Thoughts:
Library 2.0 may have meant something once upon a time. Now, IMO, it is a buzzword used to
justify trying some bad ideas with new packaging and justifying it as "forward-thinking",
"proactive" and " innovative". The biggest problem I see with Library 2.0, is that the "try something and if it doesn't work, ditch it" aspect rarely comes into play. More often, I see a stubborn insistence on trying something packaged as "Library 2.0 inspired" that clearly doesn't work until reality leaves no options other than change.
I worry that inthe efforts of some of our 2.0 colleagues to make is "hip, cool and relevant" to the Web 2.o, we will lose our biggest asset: being useful. I see value in trying to make our services more available to more people. But the question is, does Web 2.0 want Library 2.0? I sometimes see as as being like the tea-toddling preacher going to the bar to preach because that's where the people are. Sure he's got a message, but does anyone want to hear it? Are we positioning ourselves to where people actually want and need us to be or are Geek 2.0, trying to hang with the new, popular kids of Web 2.0?
I'll end with by saying that, contrary to what some will tell you: not everything is online. Let me repeat that:

NOT EVERYTHING IS ONLINE

People may expect that beacuse that's what the Snakeoil Salesman 2.0 has told them. But, that doesn't make it true. There's a whole lot of questions that need answering that simply cannot be done online. Sometimes, it takes "the old way". Let's hope the old way is still an option and not discarded in a misguided quest to make the Library into something it was never intended to be.

TheCorey's Thought #14 - Thing #15: SlideShare

Well, two posts in one day, Trying to catch up on this Learning 2.0 as the deadline looms ahead like the Death Star over the Rebel base on Yavin IV (oooh, hope the LucasLaw folks don't sue me over saying that without getting permission). Hopped on over to SlideShare. I don't do a whole lot with PowerPoint as this point in my career. If I did, I see how this would be a rather neat resource. I created an account, but couldn't get the contacts part to work. I checked the FAQ and I think I was doing things right. Maybe the website was having a glitch. Anyway, here's the account, not a lot but it's just a start:

http://www.slideshare.net/TheCorey

TheCorey's Thought #13 - Thing #13: Not aflutter over Twitter

So much time and so little blogging. The New Year may bring many changes, but some things remain the same: more work than time to do it. Which leads us to Thing # 13: Twitter.
I guess, at least for now, I'm one of those people who just doesn't "get" Twitter or its appeal. I recognize that many do and find it helpful. Good for them. To be honest, there are aspects to it that sort of remind me of the old style "chat rooms" of Internets past. I played around with it and just don't see where I would use it personally or professionally. I don't get how it's supposed to help filter out the white noise of the Internet, where, in my observation, it appears to be little more than white noise. Perhaps the day will come that I "get" Twitter and it becomes a part of my life. For now, I don't have the time to commit to it. Old fashioned work needs some old-fashioned doing. I know Lee LeFever on the CommonCraft site would likley boo my "old way" approach, but it's my way and it still works for the most part.

TheCorey's Thought #12 - Thing #14: Delicious

Normally I try to come up with a cute, clever title for my blog entry. This time I had nothing, which was a good thing this time. First off, I'm glad they redid Delicious without the odd little periods in the middle of the word. Much easier for us 1.0 folks upgrading to a 2.0 world. Second, this is definetly a "good thing". I'm rather ambivalent about the "social" aspects of Web 2.0, but I do see a lot of potential in Delicious. At the Lincoln City Libraries, we have a "webliography" of useful web sites arranged in an old Yahoo-style category format. It's useful if you can figure out which category you need. The tagging aspect of Delicious would make our webliography, a good thing, into an even better thing. I can also see it as being potentially helpful in my personal life, though I have to admit I'm still doing okay with bookmarking so far. I guess I just don't have that many websites I feel I want to or need to visit on a regular (or semi-regular) basis. I found Delicious to ba straightforward, fairly intuitive, minimally cluttered and very useful. I get why this one is so popular.