Introduction: This blog is the starting point for a learning challenge at the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County to make staff better acquainted with what is happening on the Internet and in libraries of today. The program can be considered an Internet self-defense class. The Internet has always been a fluid medium, but today changes seem to happen at the speed of sound. Social networking sites are all the rage and new resources appear online daily for a variety of purposes. Library patrons already use many of these tools and expect the library, as the “Valley’s Technology Leader,” to be knowledgeable about such things as digital images, downloadable files, tagging, image generators, blogs, wikis, and other mysterious things.
PLYMC Learning 2.0 guides participants through a series of tasks, "the
23 Things" to learn about how technology relates to libraries and vice versa. This self-discovery program was originally created at the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. No. This program is a challenge and opportunity for PLYMC staff to learn about new ways to use the Internet and technology.
Climb That Hill!
Just call me
"The Little Duquesne Incline Cable Car That Could". I--think--I--can! . . . I--thought--I--could! . . . Not--sure--I--would . . .
I--DID!!
Introduction..Getting Started!
First Thing: Hats off to Helene Blowers and the successful PLCMC project that inspired us all.
Second Thing: Four learning habits stood out for me: BEGINNING WITH THE END IN MIND is something I have been feeling very guilty about these last few weeks as the deadline approaches. So I decided to ACCEPT RESPONSIBLITY FOR MY OWN LEARNING and buckle down to take a more systematic approach. Changing my mind set to VIEW PROBLEMS AS CHALLENGES TO LEARN FROM is probably the most powerful "habit" that will help me most on the job from day to day--when that phone rings or the next email arrives. USING TECHNOLOGY TO MY ADVANTAGE will be a great outcome as I learn more about the next 21 projects. (21 more to go! Yikes!)
Blogging Away
Three and Four: Setting up and designing my blog was fun and much easier than I anticipated. That was a great leap forward. Still need to keep improving the look and content, though.Photos and Images
Five, Six, Seven: Flikr was amazing--the archive of photos even included many from my old neighborhood in Pittsburgh. Finding a pic of my mom's house was unbelievable. Still spreading the word about that one to family members.
Went to the next level with Web apps (Captioner) and Flikr tools. Grabbed a photo from my personal photo files on my PC, added the caption text and bubble, uploaded finished photo to my Flikr account and from there to my blog. Piece of cake.
RSS and Newsreader
Eight and Nine: OK, here's something ironic. Some of the best and clearest info I found about RSS feeds and newsreaders I stumbled upon from the (gulp!) AARP site. Yikes! Does that tell ya something about me or what!http://www.aarp.org/learntech/computers/howto/a2004-07-21-rssfeed.htmlSee my RSS feed of hometown news and my Bloglines newsreader above.
The Bloglines newsreader was a bit cumbersome to link to the blog. Not very intuitive.
Playing Around
Ten, Eleven, Twelve: Hi Ho Rollyo! Anyone born on "The Hill" at the top of the city would naturally have an interest in the top of the world. See my Everest Rollyo at the top of this Blog! I'll be adding more sites to search later.
Library Thing was so "cool"--I started my Everest bookshelf. DMC and I can collaborate on that one.
Loved creating my Avatar via the DoppelMe Image Generator!
Tagging, Folksonomies, Technorati
Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen: Uh Oh, hit a clunker with this one. Perhaps my least favorite group of tasks. And possibly the least applicable? OK--So I did some so-called tagging in Library Thing. Opened an account in del.icio.us and navigated around the site. To my amazement, one person had tagged the menu from Billy's Troy Hill Bistro, a little neighborhood dive on the Hill within walking distance from Goettman St. Been there and didn't realize Billy's even HAD (or needed) a fancy printed menu. But one person sure wants to be sure they can consult it when needed! Like when they have to remind themselves if a burger is on the menu. (It's a Troy Hill burger, of course, topped with a generous handful of coleslaw! Yum.)
OK--I got to Technorati and was going through the motions. Yawn. Then something happened to make me take back everything I said above about this group of exercises! I had an ephiphany: this stuff is an entre to the Internet underground!
On Technorati I found the coolest blog ever, called Pittsburgh Pist-Gazette (get it!?) Subtitled: So much to rant about and so little time. The blogger --be still my heart--went to (wait for it) Billy's Troy Hill Bistro to interview waitstaff and patrons about the current heated mayoral race. I really wanted to know every tidbit about something I would never had known existed had it not been for Technorati trolling for it and calling it to my attention. OK, I'm sorry about my earlier disinterest. You've got my attention now.
Wikis
Sixteen and Seventeen: I had thought that a YPL Wiki could take the place of internal tools such as our SIB manual, Millennium manual, etc. and help consolidate lots of internal information. We will be exploring uses of our new website management software called Ektron, which allows designated staff members to have authoring privileges. Ektron also has Wiki-ing capabilities. After exploring other library Wiki's there is more to be considered than I first thought.Online Apps and Tools
Eighteen and Nineteen:
Played around with ZoHo Writer but did not care for it much. Found it cumbersome and not very intuitive. EXCEPT, I did like the templates. I customized a couple and will go back to this for special report formats, etc. Even found a nutrition log that could be useful for our Wellness Committee to promote. Next, I checked out some award-winning 2.0 sites and landed at YELP (Real People. Real Reviews.) I could not resist yelping, so I wrote a review of the best pizza shop (might be the only one) on the hill (it's a German enclave, remember?) --that's Frank's and his great Buffalo Chicken pizza with Ranch dressing.Podcasts, Video and Downloadable Audio
Twenty, Twenty-One, Twenty-Two: YouTube was a hoot. I never really explored it before and had fun with the searching ability. Anything and everything available for viewing from the mundane to the sublime and everybody trying to be a star!
I was so happy to figure out how to embed a video into my blog, since I found the perfect one to give everyone the FLAVOR of my hometown!
Checked out three podcast directories and preferred the Podcast.net searchability, although many podcasts I chose to listen to would not play. YahooPodcasts seemed to locate the same content--but not as pleasingly arranged. Least favorite was PodcastAlley.
I had been frustrated previously in trying to download some Overdrive audio and never went back. This project gave me the opportunity to try again. I always have a book on CD to listen to in the car and have been wanting to figure out how to "drive with Overdrive". Now I'm motivated to accomplish that.
Summary at Journey's End
Twenty-Three :(Whew!) I'm not ready to go on to #24 and beyond, until I go back and delve even deeper into the previous tasks. But first, I'm taking a break from typing my user name and password! I'll never be DONE--because the mastery of all of these slippy (that's Pittsburghese, again) concepts and tasks just keeps sliding forward out of reach with every new development. Here is some food for thought to help us think about where we go from here--now that we've learned so much, what are we going to do about it? That's the challenge!
http://www.librarycrunch.com/2007/10/we_know_what_library_20_is_and.html
