Weeks 11-12, Wrap It Up

This is it, our last week of Project Play. I watched Seth Godin's video about curiosity and a few things struck me. I liked his point that it is safe to do nothing; I think a lot of people feel that way, especially about technology. It's safe and easy to stick with the status quo, but who knows what you could be doing better if you don't explore new things. It's like one of my favorite (nerdy musical) quotes, from Wicked. "Some things I cannot change, but 'til I try I'll never know."

Another issue that Godin brought up in his video on curiosity was related to school. He mentioned that school requires you not to be curious, and I'm not sure I agree with that. Perhaps in elementary, middle and high school you can't be as curious or question things as much, but once you get to college, there's a lot of questioning going on. Especially in courses where you are able to pick your own research topics, curiosity is certainly rewarded. I'm sorry if all of this sounds more academic than it should for Project Play, but this point resonated with me and I wanted to mention it.

I've really enjoyed Project Play and learning different ways to use the web 2.0 and library 2.0 resources. I think the biggest thing to remember is that this stuff is supposed to help you. Nobody should be using something if it's not helping them in some way and sometimes you have to really look into a tool before deciding if it will be useful. There's no need to use something just because it's there. I'm already using a lot of the resources we talked about, but I found new ways to use some of them and also learned about things I didn't already know about thanks to Project Play. I also really like the blog Information Wants to be Free and I'm so glad it was mentioned in the extras for this week.

This year I'll be going to WAAL, so I won't get a chance to meet any of you (that I don't already know), but it's been a fun two semesters and I've enjoyed reading everyone's blogs. Thanks :)

Mash-Ups

I think mash-ups are pretty cool because the possibilities are endless. I have used Netvibes a little bit, but not too extensively. I really like LibraryThing for Libraries and think that there is so much exciting potential with a tool like that. I love having something online where I can save the books I've read. I used LibraryThing for a while, but now I've started using Goodreads which is a tool that combines the features of facebook and LibraryThing, although it is not a mash-up. The best part about Goodreads is that you can save as many books as you want for free, I think, instead of just 200 which is the limit on LibraryThing. Widgets are an exciting feature and I've added quite a few to my iGoogle page. It would be great to have a library catalog widget on there like Ann Arbor so I could search our catalog from the same page where I check everything else. That kind of mash-up would be excellent. Probably my favorite mash-up, which might not even be considered a mash-up, is WorldCat. By combining all the library catalogs in the world (or close to it), I save myself time searching for something in both the public library catalog and the university library catalog. That's a picture of a potato masher, although I only ever use that tool to make guacamole :)

YouTube

My TV viewing habits were drastically affected by the Writer's Guild of America strike and I realized after a few months that my TV viewing had become almost nonexistent while my YouTube viewing had increased exponentially. I first got really into YouTube thanks to John and Hank Green's awesome Brotherhood 2.0 project. They chose one day to be the Super Secret Project for Awesome during which the nerdfighters (fans of the Brotherhood) took over YouTube for the day to promote charities. It was amazing, it totally worked, and some people chose libraries and book related things as their charity projects. I found a lot of cool new YouTube channels to watch because of this project and then at the end of last year when Brotherhood 2.0 ended, some fans started spin-off projects, of which I watch two.

Some interesting videos that pertain to librarians include one of my favorites, A Vision of Students Today that's thought provoking when it comes to a new generation of library users. I think YouTube is a great way to reach out to library users and I love the idea of YouTube contests, that seems like a great way to make a library project with YouTube even more interactive between librarians/library staff and patrons.

Week 8, Screen Casts

I really like screen casts and I think that for people who are visual learners, this stuff is great. Last semester I had some experience using Jing with my practicum at College Library. I was able to play around and create a few little demonstrations. This semester I have had some experience using Adobe Captivate to create tutorials and that product, because it costs lots of money, is very cool and has lots of bells and whistles. I like the possibility for libraries with all of these tools and I think it would be awesome to have a tutorial on MPL's website showing the difference between the my list feature and placing things on hold. That seems to be a confusing part of our catalog and it would be cool to be able to show patrons the difference easily.

Podcasts

Ok, podcasts, rock and roll. Right now I don't subscribe to any library podcasts, although I probably should. To get my library news, I normally read library blogs instead. The podcasts I do subscribe to are mostly Broadway related since that's an interest of mine. Like with all other fairly new technologies, there is a backlash and Dan Savage took issue with his podcast being mentioned in a blog post titled Is Podcasting Dead? from Information Week.

I'm still unclear exactly what the difference is between video podcasts and video blogs or "vlogs". From what I can tell, there isn't really a difference. I liked the Boulder Teen Webcasts and thought they were a good idea. I think that it's cool that libraries reach out to younger users through a medium they're probably already using. Podcasts are also a good way to share news of what's happening at your library and that's never a bad idea. Vlogs seem to be the even more new thing and I must admit that since the TV Writer's Strike, I have been watching lots more vlogs, most of which are related to Brotherhood 2.0 - teen author John Green and his brother Hank's video blog that took place during 2007.