Thing 38: Screencasting

Wow. This was more fun than I thought it would be, even if the subject matter of my screencast is less than gripping.

Given the Judiciary's restrictions on downloading third-party software, Jing, Wink, and the like weren't candidates. (Screencasting didn't sound like something that would lend itself to a dial-up connection, so I did this at work). I went with ScreenToaster. I caught the hint that there weren't many tutorials for it yet, but I thought their basic introduction video worked pretty well. I wish it had explained how to do subtitles in more detail, though. I would've liked to have stopped and started my subtitles rather than just have one ongoing subtitle through the whole screencast. But I wasn't sure how to stop and start without accidentally deleting all the subtitles I'd already done.

Here's my screencast, thirty-nine mesmerizing seconds of instruction on how to search our online opinions.

Unlike so many Things, I could see us using screencasting here at the law library--heck, if this one was revamped a bit, it could be used, I suppose. I've heard our Public Services staff tell tales of how they've had to try to describe navigating our website to patrons over the phone ("Now look in the upper left...no, upper left...yes, that's it. Do you see...no, look down a bit..."). Maybe we could have some stock screencasts on hand for common navigation questions. In turn, I'm not sure when I would use this at home, but now that I know how to do it, possibilities may present themselves.

Thing 37: Photo Tales

Preparing to tackle this Thing, I went off to reread the blog entries of two fellow Thingsters. Both of their embedded slideshows are dead. This isn't inspiring confidence in the Thing 37 toys.

Not quite ready to tackle a slideshow, I started with a mosaic image, using Image Mosaic Generator. Their advice is to stand back from the image about 5 meters to see it at its best. I settled for shrinking it to about 20% of original size. So see Multnomah Falls as made up of dillions of other people's images:


By the way, many of the photos that comprise those yellowish trees on the left are of rubber duckies:



Now ready to put together a slideshow, I started out by trying Animoto through Facebook. I quit after seeing that even though they had 146 reviews, they weren't scoring very high--and it looked like they'd made the reviews disappear. After that, I figured I'd just go for a no frills Flickr slideshow.



Okay, it's not playing music, but I can live with that. Pop music didn't seem to go with all those nature photos anyway.

I wouldn't say the services I tried worked "smoothly." Flickr, which you'd think would be solid and established by now, locked up when I tried to sign in. Animoto was behaving less than trustworthily. Yet I remember ten or fifteen years ago when creating a music video of your photos or video clips was a massive undertaking, done only by the truly dedicated, and now it's a free service that basically just asks for you to do some uploading. I might play around with this more when (if) I have more free time. We did a Flickr tour for our library. I doubt music and fancy transitions would improve it any, but we can always keep the possibility in mind.

Thing 36: Comic Relief--Generate Some Fun

So, am I more of a Moth Willowglitter, "caster of weird dreams" and "only seen in the light of a shooting star" (Fairy Name Generator) or a Magdalene Saint Clair, "seductress of the Beltane Feasts," "presiding over the gluttonous feasts of the wickedest night of the year" (Vampire Name Generator)?

Okay, less of an organized report here, and more of a "splashing around in the pool" effort. How could I resist Convert Your Name to a Dewey Number?

Elizabeth Tuckwood's Dewey Decimal Section:

851 Italian poetry

Elizabeth Tuckwood = 52961250801313554 = 529+612+508+013+135+54 = 1851


Class:
800 Literature


Contains:
Literature, criticism, analysis of classic writing and mythology.



What it says about you:
You're a global, worldly person who wants to make a big impact with your actions. You have a lot to tell people and you're good at making unique observations about everyday experiences. You can notice and remember details that other people think aren't important.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

Just a thought here...since I'm probably coming to Thing 36 later than many people, what are the chances that when I'm looking over the library-themed cartoons to choose one to post, that I'm choosing the work of another 23 Thingser? But here we go, with a work from Bernd:

by bernd Create your own Cartoon at www.toondoo.com

As for one of my own:

by Twen Create your own Cartoon at www.toondoo.com

Maybe I'd be enjoying the toon generators more if I hadn't spent a fair chunk of my life reading comic books, graphic novels, manga, and so on. I just kept thinking how clunky and amateurish the whole thing was. Instinctively, I'd say there's not much use for a library comic at our library, but this is sort of thing where in the hands of the right person who can think of the right punchline, something might come of it after all. Just don't expect me to be that person. I thought the name generators were fun, though. No real thought needed, just a few minutes of silly relaxation.

Thing 35: Books 2.0

You know, you glance down a list of 23 Things and right away you see some Things that attract you more than others. Thing 35 is probably the most attractive Thing on the current list.

I've been on LibraryThing since 2006. I don't feel like picking up another site for cataloging my books since I'm mostly happy with LT in this regard, plus I have a book database on my home computer. Still, I enjoyed seeing what other sites had to offer. I liked that Lib.rario.us is set up to let you enter other media besides books, but beyond that, it just seemed to be playing catch-up to the more established book sites (and light print on a dark background is difficult to read for long periods). Ditto on catch-up for BookJetty. They're justifiably proud of being linked to library catalogs, but I can look up books in libraries--or on Amazon.com--on LT. Plus, as far as I can tell from their screenshot of a book details page, they don't include cataloging information like call numbers, which is something I specifically enjoy. ITrackMine definitely adds value with its ability to track item loans, not only that you lent a book to your friend, but in what condition your friend returned it to you (and if they returned it). This is not something LT is set up for, and while I can do that with my private database, ITrackMine's "circ module" is more sophisticated. The reports feature also looks easier to use than LT's. Too bad the design of the site makes me think of the 1950s. aNobii doesn't seem to do anything that other sites don't do (I see whoever described it on the More 23 Things wiki said, "is yet another collection management site"). I got the same impression with BookTagger, although maybe its online book clubs are easier to manage than the discussion groups in LT.

I'm not likely to be reading a book on my cell phone anytime soon, it being too primitive to support these services. If I wanted to badly enough, I'd find a way to do so, but based on these offerings, I'm not motivated to try. I thought about following TwitterLit on Twitter--they even have an iPhone app I could use--but I realized that I just wasn't that interested. For the other services...look, I carry books with me 90% of the time. I just can't work up much enthusiasm for this aspect of Web 2.0, although I'm glad it's out there in case I change my mind.

I've got over 250 unread books at home. I won't need to use a reader's advisory service for years, if ever. BookStumpers looked promising though, because I too have partially-remembered books from childhood that I'd like to track down. And I might play on ReadingTrails someday, just to get a better feel of how it works.

I'll have to get back to you later about the resources for online book clubs. I have a penchant for books that no one else wants to read. But I'm in a fledgling online book club at the moment, and since its current home (Facebook) is awkward, I may look into these and see if I should recommend that we relocate.

If I enjoyed audiobooks, I bet I'd enjoy these online ways to listen to them. Librivox sounds both ambitious and noble. I'm impressed that Open Culture gleans its materials from reputable universities (when something's "free," you might very well wonder about its quality).

I joined BookCrossing about the same time I joined LibraryThing. I've released several books into the wild; rarely does anyone report that they've found one. But yes, one of my books was last seen headed for Hawaii. It's fun, as long as you can live with the uncertainty of ever hearing of your books again.

The Internet doesn't lack book reviews--why are people wondering if reading is declining? So now I have somewhere else to go besides Amazon.com, Library Journal, Facebook, LT, BC, etc. to look for reviews. You could spend so much time researching books that you'd never have time to read them! (Did I mention the number of unread books I have at home...?). But when I look up a book review, it's because I'm either thinking about reading the book or have just read it and want to know what others think of it. With The Complete Review, it looked like they review only certain books, in an effort to promote them. I suspect our tastes will rarely overlap.

No children in my private life, no children in my professional life. So, not much need to play with Web 2.0 tools for children's books. As for the book rental services, my first thought was that why would I pay for what a library does for free? Then I saw Bookswim rents college textbooks. I'm in school. I should see if they handle MLIS texts. Suddenly, this sounds practical as all get-out.

Ah, Facebook. And ah, Facebook's book apps. I believe over the past year, I've tried them all. I'm currently using Visual Bookshelf, not because I think it's a wonderful app, but because it comes closest to what I want. What I want is for LT to put together a Facebook app, but they've been procrastinating on that since 2007 at least, and I've given up on them. I like the idea of showing off my current reads. When I find myself feeling uncomfortable about it, this is encouragement to weed my friends list on Facebook. If I'm really bothered by someone seeing what I'm reading, chances are, we're not friends in any sense of the word.

Thing 34: Is This Our Competition? Online Answer Sites

Wow. After thirty seconds of looking at that list of online reference sites, I could see myself just plunging in and wallowing in information and trivia and assorted facts and never coming out again. Anyone reading this blog has noticed that it's called 23 Distractions, right?

Okay, okay, focus.

I skimmed the offered articles on online answer sites, and then went off to look at a few of them. My first visit was to WikiAnswers. I would not advise looking at their recent activity page as your introduction to the site; when I saw that "ID2907462660 asked How many miles equals eleven kilometers and said it was the same as How many miles equals 4.8 kilometers," I started getting seriously worried about the questioners, much less the answers. (WikiAnswer's home page shows far more presentable questions.) Exploring the site, I'm not sure I'd want to ask a question there, but I may set up a username later and go answer some of the questions I saw. I dunno, should I feel safer knowing that if I get an answer wrong, someone might come along and correct it, or worried knowing that some moron might come along and replace my accurate answer with nonsense? I saw both kinds of answers as I looked around on the site.

Next, I looked at Yahoo!Answers. I see this site has a different take on answers: where WikiAnswers lets you completely overwrite an earlier answer, Yahoo!Answers lists all answers and lets members vote on them. My gut instinct was to prefer the latter--give the questioner the ability to choose, don't choose for them--but if the questioner knows nothing of the subject, how would they decide? By vote, probably (if there were any), and there's nothing preventing a wrong answer from getting more votes.

So, why use these kinds of sites rather than ask a reference librarian? I can think of several reasons. Some are well-known, like the ability to ask your question at any time, or that you can be anonymous (come on, find me the person who can ask a librarian a sexually explicit question without blushing or sounding threatening...or the librarian who can manage that reference interview with perfect composure). Personally, I prefer taking in information by reading it rather than listening to it, which is what happens when you talk to a librarian. And another reason: I recently read Thomas Mann's The Oxford Guide to Library Research. He points out that many students are taught that asking the librarian for help is cheating. You may not think of that consciously after you leave school, but can you shake off that training easily?

Slam the Boards just left me shaking my head. Yes, people, we're that desperate. We're just going to force knowledge down people's throats. So what if they didn't want to come to a library to ask their questions; we'll insist that they get a library-quality answer anyway. We do have value, we do, we do, we do! (We have shaky self-esteem, is what we have).

Thing 33: Travel 2.0

This is a good time to investigate this Thing: I've just gotten back from one vacation and am gearing up to plan another. I suppose it would've been even better if I'd gotten to Thing 33 before that first vacation, but nothing's perfect.

For the travel blogs, I looked at Travel 2.0 Blog and Notes from the Road. I didn't get far into Travel 2.0 before getting distracted and heading off on a link to Nextstop.com. Testing it for Portland (my recent trip), I found a review for Cupcake Jones. The reviewer liked it much better than the friend I was visiting in Portland, who took me to Saint Cupcake instead, but at least it was a review of somewhere I'd heard of. As for Notes from the Road, it mostly served to remind me that I don't get out much: not only had I been to just one location on its homepage, I hadn't heard of most of the rest (Alvord Desert? Great Guana Cay?). Nice layout and design, though.

Moving on to the review sites, I decided on TripAdvisor. Obviously this is a site focused on hotels, rentals, food: the sorts of places you want to know about before you head off to an unknown city. Me, I tend to visit local friends who take me to the spots they know well. I ended up testing this on Bloomington, practically in my backyard. I found it interesting that when one person wrote a negative review of the Sofitel, the Sofitel posted a personalized response. Ah, the interactivity of Travel 2.0.

The travel journals are definitely more my style! I want to remember both VCarious and My Life of Travel for the next time I take a trip that's more about sightseeing than just hanging out with friends. I think it would have been great if sites like these had existed lo those many years ago when I did study abroad in Scotland. I see that MapVivo takes a different approach, that it would be suitable for a trip where you stopped at several different locations, like a tour of Europe or a road trip in the U.S.

Finally there were the travel mashups. I'm not going to have to travel to make use of Hotspotr, now that I finally have wireless devices. I plugged in my zip code and got to rediscover all the Starbucks in my neighborhood--all of them marked with cute little dollar signs, of course. Oddly, no one has mentioned the Caribou Coffees in my area. I was going to contribute a couple of cafes I know of, but I learned that Hotspotr wanted my name, at which point I became shy and ran away. Maybe later.

All this was fun, but I don't see our library making use of any of these sites. The only reason you'd come to a law library to ask about travel would probably be if you wanted to learn about the laws of your destination, and I'm guessing most people would ask their travel agent or just poke around online before coming to us.

Thing 32: Google Maps and Mashups

That's it? Just make a map and post it? Oh, thank you! After Thing 31, I was pretty much drained.

Yarn addict that I am, I decided to map out a few of the Twin Cities yarn stores. I didn't choose all of them for a variety of reasons:

1. After a few selections, I got the hang of it and didn't feel I needed to keep practicing.
2. We really do have a lot of yarn stores around here. I heard once that the Twin Cities have the highest number of yarn stores per capita, although I have no easy way to verify that.
3. May 20 is coming. Cannot spend all May perfecting this map.

View Twin Cities Yarn Shops in a larger map

Although pretty simple, there were a few tricks to putting this map together. 3 Kittens Needle Arts recently moved to a shopping center that literally isn't on Google Maps: not only is the shopping center itself not there, but none of the streets leading to it are there either. Google Maps had the proper street address, but unable to find a Main Street in Mendota Heights, they plunked the placemarker down on Main Street in St. Paul. I sense some irony in the fact that I had to look the address up on Mapquest (which did have all the streets in question) to figure out where to stick the placemarker in Google.

Another problem came up when I tried to place Knit'n From the Heart. Any other yarn store I looked up, Google showed me a map; when I looked Knit'n From the Heart up, I kept getting driving directions instead. Eventually I figured it out: the word "from" was throwing it. It was trying to tell me how to get to Knit'n from The Heart. (The solution was to search the store name as a phrase in quotation marks).

I could see uses for this in a public or academic library. But it takes a while to create one of these maps, so while it would be nice to produce one on demand, it'd make more sense to have a few choice ones ready and waiting for patrons.