Oh, the irony

A mother went into Urban Outfitters looking for clothes for her teenage son. She got terribly upset when she saw some racy books like Pornigomi and Porn for Women (pics of men doing housework). She is calling politicians and upper management of the company.

I don't really have a dirty mind, but I've seen American Pie a few times and I Googled the word to make sure... So here comes the ironic part...

Her last name is "Milfs"

Something to Blog About

Two nights ago, I was watching a Simpsons re-run with my fiance (it's one of the few tv shows we can agree on, along with Jeopardy, Cash Cab, and Dirty Jobs). It was a very touching episode that gave a reference book a brilliant moment in the sun. Homer has to do marketing research to try to get more business for the bowling alley so he can get a raise. He put on his reading glasses and is reading Advanced Marketing at the dining room table. That ends up in the trash as he moves on to Beginning Marketing. That also ends up in the trash. Then he is seen with the New American Dictionary, looking up the word "marketing."

I wanted to possibly use this clip in the instruction classroom. It would bea great introduction to reference books and getting students to start at the beginning. However, I hardly ever watch the show and couldn't think of how I would possibly figure out which episode it was.

Within seconds of starting my search, I found the exact episode title, season, summary, and list of cultural references on Wikipedia. It has its own entry for every single episode of The Simpsons through the summer of 1999 (the later DVD's are apparently not available yet). I am completely blown away, and this is a great way to illustrate how Wikipedia covers popular culture much better than any print encyclopedia... I highly doubt any pop culture encyclopedia has its own entries for every Simpsons character, episode, and location!

I looked up Gil Grissom, a character from CSI, and the entry includes the character's life story, first appearance, and have individual entries for episodes of that show as well... Print Preview shows it would take 9 pages to print this article. ER also has a list of episodes with summaries, but not individual entries.

I know Wikipedia was extensive, but I never realized how extensive. It has been incredibly helpful to me today, now I can get that season of The Simpsons on DVD if I want to show it in class, as well as finding new ways to procrastinate at work (which I hardly need)!

Social Software in Libraries

I just finished Meredith Farkas's Social Software in Libraries. I highly recommend this book to nearly everyone. I have been working with these programs for several months... actually longer, but I've only been conscious of them for the past few months. So even being pretty comfortable with most of them, I still had plenty of content to take notes about. But I think the histories and explanations at the beginning of each chapter make it ideal for librarians who are just starting the exploration of these wonderful tools. Whether you're a newbie or an experienced user of social software, the easy explanations can help you understand these yourself, and explain them to your patrons, administration, and faculty.

She is a very good writer and I found her explanations easy to understand. I also found her balance of different types of libraries fair, though I would have liked to know more about what academic libraries are doing with gaming.

The "software" covered in this book include blogs, RSS, wikis, online communities, social networking, social bookmarking & collaborative filtering, online reference, mobile revolution, podcasting, screencasting & vodcasting (videos), and gaming. There is also a chapter on "what is social software?" and tips on how to make things work for your particular library, keeping up, and future trends.

I don't want to copy all of the notes I took down since I think people should read the book themselves and this would end up being a very long post. However, I want to share some of the practical ideas I found in the book, or that the book inspired me to have.

• Can place an RSS widget on the main Web site so that news from the blog will appear on the home page. You can also do this with social bookmarking to highlight good Web resources.
• Other things to include in a blog: reader's advisory, highlighting books, database updates (Example), news, workshop supplements, suggested sites and sources, and marketing. Blogs for staff: news, reference knowledge, record of questions and answers, book club discussions, printer status, database access issues, policies, and articles others might be interested in.
• Some libraries are turning most of their site into a blog format, or using blogs, wikis, or social bookmarking sites to create subject guides.
• Encourage students to comment on the blog.
• Use LibWorm to find blogs of interest.
• See if Indigo offers RSS. We have our OPAC through TLC and are anxiously awaiting Indigo, their brand-new catalog currently in development that includes a lot of Web 2.0 features. But I don't know if RSS is one of them.
• Can use RSS with job sites. I'm not looking for a job, but I could show practicum classes how to do this!
• Some libraries are offering RSS feeds for news about your library account, though there are security issues with this.
• Put RSS feeds in subject guides. Include the important journals or organizations' news.
• RSS Mix and KickRSS allow you to mix RSS feeds.
• Wikis are good for a group working on a collaborative project towards one specific goal, which is a little different from a blog which is better for an individual or small group who wants to disseminate information or start a dialog.
• Create a Flickr account with pictures from past library events and put a sideshow widget under the News column on our Web site.
• Build a presence in the places where patrons are.
• Some bookmarking tools detect broken or redirected links. We could possibly use this to control our Web site sections of the Subject Links.
• Two social bookmarking sites are designed specifically for academics and researchers: Connotea and CiteULike.
• You can use social bookmark tags like "read_later" to mark things you want to come back to.
• Can use LibraryThing for reader's advisory, and www.whatshouldireadnext.com.
• Add a page on bottom of Subject Links for resources on social software.
• Some libraries like the University of PA are creating their own social bookmarking sites.
• Perhaps use some of this stuff with an RSS feed for a Hot Topics section with resources on current events.
• Some public libraries have programs where they help students create podcasts and videos.
• Audacity is the most popular free podcasting software. You can find copyright-free podcast music at www.music.podshow.com.
• The Flash tutorials I created are "screencasts"... yeah!!!
• You can record audio or video of speakers in the library and post them on the blog or Web site for people who couldn't make it.
• Don't use the word "blog" on the Web site. It turns non-techies off and it's just the software, it's not descriptive of what it does.
• Perhaps we could have circulation workers pass out bookmarks next fall that market the blog (but only if we have more frequent updates!)

Passion Quilt: Be Informed

I'm jumping on the bandwagon and creating my entry to the passion quilt. This seems to have been the original challenge, which is to pick a photo and write words on it that show what you're most passionate about children learning.

I knew right away what my wording would be, though once I selected it, perhaps it is too simple. But I'm simple and this is something that I have been thinking about a lot.

When I say "be informed," I am talking outside of class. I want students to become informed adults and recognize when they need information out in the real world. I want them to pour through Home Buying for Dummies like I just did last weekend, to scour Consumer Reports before buying a car, to make informed decisions on careers and graduate school. I want them to study politicians and the issues being debated before voting, to know where the products they buy are being made and how their actions affect the environment, to know enough about others to have compassion for the less fortunate and to see others' perspective.

I found the original picture here, and think the photographer gave it a perfect title: "Please read instructions fully before opening!"

So I really hope my title doesn't seem totally lame...

100th post

This is my 100th post! Yeah! I want to see confetti and balloons!

Anyway, I just spent the morning making a brief tutorial on RSS feeds. It is heavily based on Common Craft's Plain English video, but I want to bring in the academic uses of RSS feeds. I really hope this isn't considered plagiarism. I can give this to faculty to get them started, then they can read the Web site information I created for them last month.

Twitter

I signed up for a Twitter account yesterday so I can stop saying "It sounds stupid" and can either say "Once I used it, it's great," or "Once I used it, I realized it was stupid."

Yesterday, I watched Common Craft's Twitter in Plain English video and highly recommend it. I plan to watch the rest of the videos today. A blog called Please be Quiet I found through Twitter recently posted on using the Plain English explanations to help students and colleagues understand these technologies. I haven't had much luck explaining Web 2.0 stuff to people, so I think I'm going to watch these and carefully take notes.

Wonderful Video

Perhaps many people saw the link to this in the ALA Direct newsletter from last night, though I would be surprised if many sat through the 15-minute video. I have to say this is a wonderful presentation by Clay Shirky at the Web 2.0 Expo, and worth the investment of time. I even took a whole page of notes while watching the video.

The presentation discussed a response to someone's question of how do people find the time to participate on Wikipedia and other social networking venues on the Web. The implication is that these people had no life. He pointed out that for the past 50 or 60 years, our society has had an unprecedented amount of free time and we have chosen to spend a large amount of it watching television. The entire Wikipedia project represents about 100 million hours of human thought, whereas television represents 200 billion hours of human thought in the US alone in a single year. We spend 100 million hours per weekend watching the ads alone! Of course finding concrete studies to back up these numbers would be interesting, but the figures are plausible.

From the point of view of the masses, the media of the 20th century was only about consumption. Now, it's largely about consumption, but also producing and sharing. People who grew up with one-way media aren't necessarily buying into the new media, but young children are assuming that media is broken if they cannot interact with it.

Within this, he talked about the "cognitive surplus" of our society. If we knew what to do with it, it wouldn't be considered a "surplus" anymore. He is not advocating throwing the television out of the window. He feels that if we take a small part of this cognitive surplus and put it to use, we could do some wonderful things.

I'm going to try to find everything this guy has ever written now!