Thing #8: RSS, part 1

This week's Things deal with RSS and Thing #8 has us signing up with Bloglines and subscribing to some feeds. Well, no problem for me there as I've already got an account which contains about 500 feeds. So, yep, I'm stuck for something to specifically blog about. Well, the thing's built in questions have come to the rescue!

What do you like about RSS and newsreaders?

Simple, the fact that they make keeping up simple. If I had to actually bookmark all of these resources and check daily for what's new, at best I'd go insane. With RSS, all I need to do is subscribe and all the information comes to me as soon as it can

How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your work or personal life?

My problem is that I use this all the time in both my work AND personal life so much so that sometimes it's hard to differentiate between the two. If I read a feed about cool technology, is that for work or is that personal? The answer is "yes".

How can libraries use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?

Libraries can use RSS in two ways. First librarians can use it to keep up with news and the opinions of other librarians. The libraries themselves can use it as a great way to distribute information to their users.

Thing #6: New Trading Card

New Trading Card
Originally uploaded by Travelin' Librarian

Thing #6 has us playing with flickr mashup tools. I created a trading card for myself way back when but I never really like the photo so I've taken this opportunity to create a new one. Hope y'all like it.

Thing #5 : Blogging from flickr

Miles Davis
Originally uploaded by jazz matrix

Thing #5 of our Learning 2.0 series involves playing with and optionally signing up for a flickr account. Well, got the account already (approaching 15,000 photos) and I'm pretty familiar with how it works. The last item was to blog a photo from flickr. So, I poked through my recent flickr favorites and figured I share this classic photo of Miles Davis. (I'm a big Miles fan!)

Learning 2.0, Thing #3

Well, it's NLCL2 time again folks and this is the first blog-based assignment. Thing #3 has us creating a blog and writing some posts. Well, I've got the blog already and I don't seem to have any problems coming up with topics lately. However, as part of the assignment we're supposed to blog about the 7 and 1/2 lifelong learning habits and "which one might be easiest for you and hardest for you & why?"

This is a hard one for me. I just skimmed through the list again and honestly, I don't find any of them difficult. My guess is that this is because it's my job to constantly learn new things and that I'm a trainer so I'm constantly teaching others. This does put me in a unique situation compared to many others on our staff but I know I'm not totally alone.

As for what's easiest, habit 7.5 most definitely: play. In some ways though this makes separating my work life from my non-work life somewhat difficult. I'm allowed to play at the office and many things I play with outside of work have job-related outcomes. I'm not complaining, I just have to force myself to separate some times.

Creative Commons @ MPOW

I don't usually cross-post between this personal blog and the office blog but a project I've been working on for about a month has just been implemented and I'm totally excited about it. Check out the details on the NLC blog.

Learning 2.0 starts today

I'm in my office this morning about an hour before everyone else start to appear. This in itself, isn't bloggable since that's my SOP. However, this morning I just put in the links to the first two of 23 things for the Commission's Learning 2.0 program. This week there's just some reading and thinking to do for the participants so there won't be too much excitement. Next week, they all start blogging. I'll be participating too so watch this space for my thoughts and comments on the learning exercises.

(If you're not an NLC staff member, which I'll assume you're not, you're welcome to participate in our program. Just follow along via the link above. Unfortunately, you won't be eligible for the prizes.)

One Laptop Per Child: Laptops designed for learning

The One Laptop Per Child (http://laptop.org) project's goal is "To provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves." To that end, the XO laptop is a machine created explicitly for children and learning. Karin Dalziel will demo the XO laptop, give a tour of the operating system, called "Sugar," and explain how features of the laptop are custom made for education.
Presented at the Nebraska Library Commission on 1 February 2008.

Click To Play

Interactive Conference Booth

In the Commission booth at the Nebraska Library Association conference this week there will be a lot going on. We'll have the laptops for e-mail checking and plenty of video games including DDR on the XBox 360, Guitar Hero II on the Playstation 2, and Wii Sports. (If you ask the right person, we might even hook up an Atari 2600 for some 8-bit old-skool gaming.) We'll also be running a series of library-related YouTube videos. Those of you who can't attend can view the videos here.

Is reference via Twitter possible?

Last night I had a "great idea" for an experiment: reference via Twitter! Our reference department already has a Twitter account (NLC_Reference) so all that needed to be done was to make sure someone was watching the account's e-mail address and to then let people know that they could send us reference questions via Tiwtter's direct message feature. We'd then receive the questions (short ones obviously) and direct message back the (again, short) answers. Well, it turns out things are always as easy as they seem.

Unknown to me, in order for person A (a patron) to send a direct message to person B (the Commission), person B needs to be following person A. Up 'till now, this account hasn't bee following anyone as we're just posting questions asked to show the diversity of questions we get at a state library. There really wasn't any need to follow anyone. But to accomplish this idea of mine the following would need to happen:

1. We market the fact that we're accepting reference questions via Twitter and tell people our username.
2. They follow us.
3. We receive an e-mail telling us of the new follower.
4. We go to the Twitter page of the new follower and start following them.
5. They receive notification that we're following them.
6. They can now send us direct message reference questions.

Granted this isn't exactly the most complicated set of procedures in the world but one must wonder if it's worth the effort for the limited exposure. (We've got a MeeboMe page which doesn't require a user to do anything in order to ask us a question.) Say they start following us late on Friday. We're not going to follow them back until Monday morning. The result is several days before they can even ask the question let alone receive a response. Also, we're worried that if people know we're "following" them they might try to ask us a question publicly instead of via direct message. Despite the fact we are technically following them, we'd have no intention of actually reading anything they post. Might then someone think we're ignoring them if we don't respond?

The decision isn't mine. I think I've explained everything accurately to our head of reference and she's going to mull it over. I'll keep you posted but any comments on this would be greatly appreciated.

Nerdvana

I think my office is finally set up to cover what I need. Ok, it took three computers and an additional DSL line to do it, but now I can really get some work done ;-)

I reject your gravity and substitute my own!

During Monday's debrief of Friday's NLC grand opening in Second Life we were discussing dancing on the roof. Being a child of the 80s I made some sort of comment to the effect of "too bad we weren't dancing on the ceiling". Well, Allana pulled it off and Christa tested it out.

Just stop by our building and try it out. Just look for the ball on the ceiling of the first floor.

You're Invited!

You're Invited to the Grand Opening of the Nebraska Library Commission in Second Life!

Second Life is the online virtual world built and owned by it's residents. More than 400 librarians from all types of libraries are using Second Life to provide programs, services and materials to their patrons in the virtual world.

For example, at the Nebraska Library Commission in Second Life, we have installed a rotating exhibit of photos from Nebraska Memories. The photos on display will be changed on a regular basis, so there will always be something new to see!

We will also be scheduling events and training in the upcoming months. Check back here and at our Second Life building to see what we have planned!

So, join the Second Life community by creating your own personal avatar (it's FREE!) and come visit the Nebraska Library Commission at our new building on Cybrary City.

NLC Vendor Day 2007

Yesterday several dozen librarians from throughout Nebraska joined NLC staff and about a dozen library vendors at the Cornhusker Marriott in Lincoln, NE for the second annual NLC Vendor Day.

Overall I'd say it was a success. All of the sessions were well attended and many great questions were asked of the vendors about their products. Both of my sessions, Second Life and Hot Topics in Technology" were also well attended.

More specifically to me, my use of YouTube as presentation platform seemed to go over very well. All of the feedback I received indicated that it worked well and gave everyone an idea of what it was like to be in Second Life without actually going there. (That, and I didn't use PowerPoint at all so that's a guaranteed plus.)

From the presenter's persepctive YouTube did leave a bit to be desired. Due to the fact that all YouTube video pages force you to scroll to see the whole video window and each time you move to the next video in a playlist you have to re-scroll, I decided to use the playlist that I embedded in my blog the previous day. This way I could scroll down once, click play, and let it run, pausing when I needed to address something specific. Unfortunately, I didn't test this plan fully in advance. It seems that embedded playlists will play the first four videos and then force you to click over to the YouTube site to play the rest. (For purposes of ad revenue I'm sure.) So, due to this I was back in YouTube, scrolling to align future videos on the screen. It wasn't a complete breakdown of the plan but it did catch me off guard, something I try to avoid during a presentation.

The only other comment I would make about this method of presenting is not to go over the 30 minute mark when showing video. I pretty much kept to exactly 30 but I started to get the feeling at the end that if I'd gone any longer I would have started to loose some of the attendees.

Overall I'd give the day a 9 out of 10 and my YouTube experiment an 8 out of 10. (My photos from the day can be found by clicking on the photo in this post.)

YouTube as Presentation

Tomorrow is the Nebraska Library Commission's Vendor Day and as part of the festivities I get 30 minutes to introduce Second Life. So, with the discovery of the video I posted earlier today I decided to take a different approach and assemble 30 minutes worth of YouTube videos and use them. (I'll most likely cut short the Vega song short as I'm using it more as an intro to the video on building her SL guitar.) I've still got handouts but I thought this would be an interesting experiment. The videos are presented for you below and I'll report back afterwards as to how the audience liked it.

Referenceing Twitter

The Nebrask Library Commission's reference staff are Twittering! Check them out at http://twitter.com/NLC_Reference.

Herding Avatars is like herding cats

NLC Group Photo Outtake
Originally uploaded by Travelin' Librarian.

The NLC Network Services staff got together this afternoon to take a group photo in front of our new building in Second Life. Getting everyone in the right clothes, in the right place, not tripping over each other, and finally into the right pose is no easy task. Oh, then there's the lighting issues... Look for the final result shortly on the NLC blog.

Work @ Your Library

Help us welcome our new staff member...

I guess I'm official. I've been blogged by the NLC.