Remember the Bones!

If my dog had her way, I would create a Remember the Milk list for all essential items. Oh wait, I have no excuse not to create one because this fab tool, like all of the other ones we've learned about in Project Play, is free & easy! Check out my list to see what Sequoia thinks I need to remember. The best feature, I think, is the ability to add in URLs for each item on your list. If you were doing online shopping or compiling a list of possible items to buy online, this would be a great way to store the links so you can quickly shop for them when you are ready to make purchases. I can definately see using a tool like Remember the Milk for this.

I admit it - I am a list maker extraordinaire. I make them at work: nonfiction, YA fiction, YA nonfiction, graphic novels, deadlines, projects, even Project Play assignments. I make them at home: travel ideas, grocery lists, recipes to try, weekend to-dos, house projects, birthdays - I could go on and on. I revise them, color code them, add post-its, and even sometimes make a sublists for my initial list. I can't stop myself from picking up small notebooks and notepads with fun designs on the covers that are destined to contain many a list. But would I really use this to-do list making tool? Can I give up the satisfaction of physically drawing a line through items on my list and slowly creating a page full of finished items? I feel like I'd be missing some of the pleasure of writing out a new list, carrying over a few items from a mostly completed list and adding in all sorts of new things. For now, I think I'll stick to my little notebooks - at least most of the time.

Docs in Socks

Now I can quite easily access in-progress projects from home, even in my socks and jammies! No more "forgetting" the disk or usb drive at the library...it is all right there with the touch of a button. Is this a good thing? Will I find myself drawn to working on library projects over evenings and weekends that already speed by? I best be careful or I'll soon live up to the title of "overachiever" that was recently bestowed upon me by a colleague. I can always forget my google password for a couple of days, right?

But seriously, will Google never cease! Just when I was over marvelling how Google Calendar has taken the place of my many different paper calendars and thus helped to keep me in the right place at the right time (at least sometimes), along comes this lesson and my intro to Google Docs. I added a comment to the Project Play doc and then a slide to the slideshow. The slideshow was very slow to load but looked spiffy once it came up. Now I'm creating and sharing docs left and right. This is a great tool for multi-person projects and would lend itself well to scheduled working from home telecommuting or e-commuting. Best of all, I will now be recommending this great tool to patrons who wish to access Microsoft programs on public access PCs that do not have these programs already installed.

I <3 IM

Welcome back, fellow Project Players! I'm excited to embark on a new semester of learning about all kinds of fun 2.0 tools and resources. I'm beginning semester 2 with a warm cup of hot cocoa (with mini marshmallows, of course) rather than my usual Diet Coke being that it is late evening and I don't want to be awake ALL night.

I first began IM-ing with my sisters when we all spread out across the world during our college years. IM was a great way to keep in touch - mostly because it is FREE - and the three of us could set dates to "chat" together. I soon added friends near and far to my buddy list and could happily chat away during the long, cold Wisconsin winters while watching a movie or baking cookies. I've never been a good "phone person" and have not had a landline phone in probably 5 years or so. IM (and txt) offers the perfect alternative and even works despite having no bars on your cell phone (no, most people cannot hear me now from inside my house!) I still find it a tad strange to chat with friends that live a mere 5 or 6 blocks away... but then again, in negative degree weather, it sure beats walking down the block!

Internal IMing at my library was a precursor to offering IM reference. Many staff set up IM accounts using yahoo and meebo and *try* to remember to login when they are at a single computer station for a set amount of time. This is yet another way for us to communicate with one another and ask quick questions - especially since our service desks and offices are spread out over multiple floors. If you'd like to be my buddy, my screen name is stojaime (AIM & Yahoo). I am usually good about logging in when I am staffing the Reference Desk. You should see me online about 30 or so hours each week. As you can see on the side column of my blog, I have a meebome widget so you can also IM me even if we're not buddies.

My library began offering IM reference service for patrons during set hours about a year ago. We have accounts set up in all of the major IM services and we aggregate them though Meebo. Our official hours are Mon-Thurs from 6-8 pm and the service is staffed by the one person on duty at the Adult Services/Reference desk. So far, traffic has been fairly low. Then again, we have not done a lot of PR. We have some flyers and table tents in the library on the tables where our wireless is strongest. We also have some business cards advertising the service that I've handed out to teens during programs. We have the meebo widget on our website and we add our screen name to lots of pr so patrons can add us as buddies. If you'd like to be our buddy, our screen name is askstoref. In the future, I'd like to expand this service with more hours and lots more PR, especially to the middle and high schools. The one challenge with expanding the service and more PR is how to staff it and keep up with questions coming from patrons expecting a speedy reply while also being the one person staffing a reference desk and handing all in person, phone, and email questions. I think our first step at having a few set hours is a great way to get our feet wet and see what works for us.

By the way, for SCLS people out there reading this, your MeeboMe widget may or may not work on a LINK computer! So, you may or may not be able to IM me via my widget, nor will you be able to test if yours is working correctly, depending on what version of flash is installed on your PC (or unless you use a non-LINK computer station).

My Dog is Licking My Laptop!

Seriously...I had to wrestle for a space to see the screen. I think she was also getting lost in adding restaurant and market links to my del.icio.us account. Here's a sloganizer for you faithful readers,

Del.icio.us has gone to the dogs

Reflecting on the semester, my latest questions are thus:

1. What is the correct format for editing and changing blog posts? Is it okay for one to simply edit and republish? Or is one supposed to use a strikethrough for edited areas and add in new info in italics or something of the sort? Is there some sort of blogiquette I should be aware of?

2. How does a semester 1 participant register for Project Play semester 2? Or are we automatically registered simply by finishing? Will there be a registration limitation and thus I should be noting the start time and date on my google calendar?

3. How many diet cokes did you enjoy during our first semester? I lost count!

Here a Wiki, There a Wiki

I've put off posting about the Project Play, Week 9 theme, wikis, for some reason I cannot pinpoint exactly. Perhaps it is that I am a bit sad our semester is coming to an end. I loved being in school, especially grad school at SLIS, and would always find myself somewhat melancholy as a semester drew to a close and I handed in that last paper. But, I cannot put off posting about these last assignments forever as I want to actually be recorded as completing the first semester of Project Play!

I've dabbled in contributing to a few wikis and even started and used one for the Adult Services staff at my library to complete a departmental assessment project at the request of our Director. It was handy to use a wiki for this purpose rather than a shared word document - more organized layout with different pages and links between them and less email and revised document copies floating around between staff. If I recall correctly, I was able to set up the wiki so that only invited staff could view and modify it - so it was a shared creating and editing project but only shared by selected people and not the entire world. It was over a year ago that we finished up the assessment project and I'm sure that wiki is floating out there in cyberspace feeling quite neglected. (Note to self: find address of wiki and purge if possible).

I've also been contributing to the SCLS programming wiki but not as much or as often as I would like to. I think it will be a great resource for library staff as it evolves and more information is added. It is so easy to use and add to ... the difficulty is finding time to work on it, or making time to work on it, with all of the other pressing responsibilities, deadlines, new tasks suggested, and majority of time spent assisting patrons at the reference desk. I wonder how many libraries/library staff creating and working on wikis have that work as part of their routine position responsibilities and workload? Does your library have a dedicated web/internet services staff person and/or do you assign designated focus time for staff to work on web/internet projects?

Following the instructions for this lesson, I visited wikipedia and noticed that my library is already listed. I wonder who added it?!

A Del.icio.us Time of Year

What a wonderful time of year to be exploring del.icio.us as our assignment for Project Play,Week 8. As my pies were baking in the oven and rosette irons anxiously awaiting their dip into the hot oil (ahem...lard), I was able to create a handly little list of delectable diners, elegant eateries, and mouthwatering markets that I would like to someday visit.

I found del.icio.us quite easy to use for adding my links; however, compared to the other tools we have been assigned to try this term I think it is a bit lacking in aesthetics. Blue, black, mostly text, minimal to absent graphics...perhaps simple is the key with this one. I really don't think I'd use del.icio.us as one big storehouse for all of the links I use, although I do see use for it in my life for specific subject links I would like to share. I have different "favorites" links on the two library PCs and two personal PCs that I use. These are tied to the type of work I am doing on each PC, at each desk or at home, and there really isn't a whole lot of crossover. I don't want to have to login to another site to get to those links when clicking on the "favorites" button works just fine (and bah humbug, too!) On the other hand I can definitely see using del.icio.us for things like my restaurant list, a craft supply list, birthday wish list, etc. Basically for lists of web links that I would like to be able to easily share with others. Obviously, this use would also be great for a library to share web resources/pathfinders with patrons as is being done by the Menasha Public Library.

Now on to the "tags and tagging" portion of this post. I love tags. Love the idea of tags and people using regular, day-to-day language to organize and share information. I wonder how many people go back and add to or change their tag terms as time goes on. I especially love tag clouds. I think they are pretty, and fun, and an intriguing way to visually show what users of any given site are most interested in/posting about. The problem I have found with tags and tagging is that, depending on my mood/frame of mind/amount of caffeine, I may easily tag the same item in different ways. Then when reviewing my list of book titles, links, or blog posts later, I think of altogether different tags. Or notice I have added some fitting tags to some of my items that would also describe other of my items. Or I start looking at the way other people have tagged a book or photo and want to use some of their tags. Then I have to go back and add in more tags and also try to remember those tags when I add future posts so I can include them. I do think the tagging feature on some of the sites we are exploring this semester have progressed since I first used the sites...or perhaps I am becoming more comfortable with using the sites and notice things I did not at first explore. For example, I don't remember seeing the "show all" link next to "Labels for this post" (tags) in Blogger but I now find it handy each time I am posting to click on this and refresh my memory about tags I've used in the past.

My Week 8 Questions:
Why do some sites call tags "tags" while others call them "labels" or something else?
My guess - this would be the folksonomy of the site creator.
Why do some sites require you to use commas between tag terms while others only require spaces?
My guess - another example of the site creator's thought pattern.
Is there a general rule of thumb for multi-word tags? For example, should the tag "project play" be two words separated with a space, or one word with no space, or capitalized, or some other format, or all of these?

Overdue and Drooling

...but not for long. My apologies, fellow Project Players, for falling behind in our weekly assignments. I must admit that I became distracted when reading Service Included and have recently been caught up in imagining the world of French Laundry while pouring over Chef Thomas Keller's cookbooks. Oh and what a world I imagine it to be! In the interest of not drooling all over the reference desk, I will pull myself out of the world of French~American culinary fantasyland and back to the reality of, well, this very grey November day.

I have, however, thoroughly enjoyed reading your posts about tagging, del.icio.us, and wikis. Not to fear, my thoughts on lessons 8 and 9 will soon appear! As an aside, I did familiarize myself with using the LINKCat Scrubber for this meager post so all is not lost. I highly recommend it to any staff or libraries that are blogging about titles and authors. Using the scrubber and making your references to titles hotlinks to LINKCat is the perfect way for your readers to head straight from your blog to LINKCat to place requests for the items of which you write. I'm guessing most of you already know this but for me it was a great ahh-haa moment.

Now, I best tag this entry "overdue".