GoogleDoc Experiment

A few of us have been messing around with the Info desk schedule in GoogleDocs. The Info desk skedmeister creates it as an MS Excel spreadsheet and stores it on our common server. Recently we uploaded the sked in GoogleDocs and invited the other schedulers in as collaborators. The schedule imported beautifully, but we realized that the drawback to having the schedule on the web is the URL. To keep the same URL, we would need to delete the current schedule and reload each new schedule weekly, probably on Saturday, which might not be very convenient. If we let Google change the URL weekly, we’d have to refer back to our email for the link. It is fun to play with, until I remember the fifteen other work tasks that should be taking priority.

Suburban Myth

I am fairly gullible. And suggestible. Any magician can fool me; anyone with a pocket watch can hypnotize me. Therefore, I suppose that it shouldn't have surprised me that I believed it when I read that black screens save energy. After all, our ancestor computers all had black screens on which little white DOS code paraded. However, Google posted a bloglet last year that asserts that this is wrong. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/08/is-black-new-green.html

Maybe it's time to pick a new background for my blog...

Sharing Skeds

At WST, our desk schedule is revised almost every day. What about sharing desk schedules using the Google spreadsheet? Imagine the snow falling fast and furious and Chief ****** calling with the news that the libraries will be closed. Firing up the computer before the power goes out, the Branch Manager calls the morning shift with the news.

I know that the kebosh was put on posting the closing on a shared site (aside from our web site), but this would at least make things a bit easier. Perhaps the Meeting Room sked could go on a shared site. And, if branches wanted to be collegial, we could all look at each other's skeds. And dare I say it, perhaps we could even get hq to buy in and learn who's on an 8-4 sked, who's on an 8:30 to 3:30 sked, who's in the building, etc.

Google Reader Redux

New to me is Google Reader
Could it be that it’s a feeder?
Like an RSS thing-gummy
For a Web 2 point 0 dummy?

Ok, I am floundering. I subscribed to a couple of your blogs and now it's talking about sharing and friends. What's that all about. I learned how to share a document from Google docs, but it didn't say anything about friends.

(I know that you probably tried to teach me this in the RSS feed exploration but I am not too good at reading instructions.)

Detritus in Cyberspace

I was talking with blogger Belinda Blomscogg this morning and mentioned how much I enjoyed her link to Library Lovers LiveJournal. (You have to read the post that links to the YouTube video of the 61 year old librarian who was ticketed because she held up a McCain=Bush sign on the plaza outside the building in Denver where the candidate was going to speak. As she commented after being given her court date, “Why would Republicans, who voted for Bush, be offended by this?")

I had to admit, however, that I had signed up for the service and neglected to write down my username and password. How many times have we warned patrons about this? Now I am taking up another tiny useless bit of space on the web.

It seems as though we are still in the expansion phase of the web and that more efficient storage is making growth possible. What a lot of free services Google provides even as its stock goes down! How can this continue? Won’t even Google find storage too expensive and start to charge? And isn’t it green to clean up after ourselves, even in cyberspace?

Meanwhile, all our old online projects, neglected and rejected e-mail accounts, memberships in passé social networking sites are blipping around the net, like worn-out satellites in outer space. When they start to fall, who are they going to hit?

I'm back...

I am now hooked on airing every passing thought. Or should I say venting? I just tried the Read-alike Wizard in Gale's Books and Authors. I entered the title Amulet of Samarkand and instead of the list of suggestions, I got one hit--The Amulet of Samarkand! The wizard didn't even suggest the two sequels.

Who is the bot behind the curtain?

This is kind of Web 2.0-ie, isn't it? Because it looks as though Gale is trying to be all interactive.

Oh, and the Browse by subject, character, etc. feature doesn't let you change your mind after you enter one of the limited occupations or subjects. You have to clear your selections (slowly...) and try again.

So long, and thanks for all the dish...

Web 2.0 exploration has been fun! I have particularly enjoyed viewing all your blogs. You have posted some great tips and comments. I will miss lurking and just generally messing around.

As far as what will be most useful on the job--

When helping patrons: Google docs and Zoho
When helping my own aging brain: del.icio.us
When thinking about how to jazz up our web site: Flickr and blogs
When thinking about how to communicate with each other: blogs and WIKIs

• How about using Google docs or another collaborative, web-based docs site when we are creating new ClickHere! scripts or One-on-One documents?
• What about blogging our fave reads with the ability for our users to comment?
• How about putting our programming and outreach photos on our web site in slide show format?
• How about broadening the number of people who can contribute to our web page so that it won't be a burden to a few?

Hasta la vista en linea, bebes.

Tagging

Tagging. New name for a technique I learned in library school 29 years ago in my classification class. Bert Boyce, one of my favorite professors, gave us a project that measured relevance against inclusivity. (This, btw, was back when you had to create computer programs by typing commands on punch cards.)

Ever since, I have valued relevance over inclusivity. When working with a patron, it seems better to retrieve a few highly relevant hits than to bring back page after page of peripheral results. Yet, over the years, most of the visiting licensed database trainers have seemed to think that we are going to be more impressed with high numbers than with relevance.

It will be interesting to see how AquaBrowser handles this.

del.icio.us is delightful!

Thank you, orangerful and Web 2.0 exploration team! I am very impressed with del.icio.us, so far. I loaded the buttons onto my work computer with no problems. Sites like del.icio.us that let you view your stuff from anywhere are my favorites. Now all I have to do is remember the del.icio.us web address...

WIKIs and Truthiness

Are WIKIs the new PowerPoints? The plain vanilla, Travelling Pants, (you don't really believe that one size fits all, do you?), darling of Web 2.0ers everywhere?

My objections to WIKIs:

1. They're dull. I see one and my eyelids start to droop. I understand the advantages of not having to know how to design web pages, but I would like to see a little creativity in the layout.
2. Truthiness. I am still leery of the way content can be changed. The way I look at it, each edit by a new author ought to link to a new page. I do admit that many of our current electronic licensed databases are far from error free. (Compare the different Gale biography articles for a musician and see how many errors you can spot.) However, my feeling is that if WIKIs are the written equivalent of talk radio they are to be taken with a Grain of Salt...
3. Why are so many out of date? The advantage to WIKIs is that they are so easy to update, the perfect collegial, collaborative tool. If so, why are so many out of date, orphans of the web? If it's everybody's job, could it turn out that it's really everybody else's job?

I did enjoy WIKIs in Plain English and think that for a collabortive project with a firm deadline and timeline, WIKIs could work well. Maybe a WIKI-Blog hybrid might be an answer for something like our strategic plan.

ZoHo Assignment

Did you know that the first use of nerd in modern English is attributed to Dr. Seuss, whose zookeeper wannabe captured a nerd, along with a nerkle and proo, to exhibit in his menagerie in If I Ran the Zoo? Such are the factoids that my husband reads to me from TLS every five minutes while I am wasting my time doing mega-Sudokus.

I must say that ZoHo is rather SlowHo.

I tried importing my ZoHo doc to the blog, but lost the formatting. So, here is the photo I used of a sea otter, the ultimate anti-nerd.

I am quite a fan of the Google spreadsheet. It's simpler to use than Excel. Sort of the equivalent of DOS and Windows. I am sure that for professional number crunchers Excel is so worth it, but for someone like me, who basically wants to add and multiply and just occasionally average things out, it's great.

Both ZoHo and Google want you to get an account before using them. But both seem simple to operate afterward and a great way to save and share info on the web.