September 2007 Archives

Roy Tennant linked to his listing of blogs he checks on a regular basis. There are so many great blogs that I was missing out there---and this just in the pool of blogs that cover libraries and technology.

On a similar note, Meredith Farkas posted the results of her 'three favorite blogs' survey. I didn't get as much out of this one---perhaps because the list was huge, or maybe because I'm already reading the bulk of the most-recommended ones. Roy's list was more specifically focused, and in that respect (since I'm interested in his research and that of others working in related areas) more relevant to me.

I posted a public Google Reader feed of my Top Ten Favorite (Non-Local) Blogs (as far as libraries and technology go).

What are your must reads for work-related blogs?

Related to my last post---here's a video on Ken & Roberta Williams, who created Mystery House, the Wizard & the Princess, and other early graphical video games. On it, Roberta Williams shares some interesting thoughts on the population that owned and played video games in those days.

Back when I was a wee tot growing up in Iowa, we got an Apple II computer. God knows how much it cost. Back then, there was one store in town that carried Apples, and they also stocked a few games to play on them. I only knew one other family in town who owned a computer.

With all of the buzz and marketing surrounding the release of Halo 3, I started thinking about those computer games that I played over 25 years ago. The two games I played most were both command-driven mystery / adventure games--Mystery House and the Wizard and the Princess. These were some of the first graphical adventure games in existence. Not very exciting, but hey, it was a step up from Pong!

The Wizard and the Princess never left me, because there was a part of the game that I could never get past. About two screens into the game (because the game was, essentially, a finite collection of set pixillated vignettes) the player encountered a rattlesnake.

I spent more hours than I should have sitting in my basement staring at that rattlesnake screen shot. I could never get past him, and so essentially, the game was over for me. On to Castle Wolfenstein and pinball! (and eventually I dumped all video games in favor of watching MTV 24 hours a day. What can I say, I was an overachiever.)

Getting past the rattlesnake stymied me for over 25 years. When I was playing the game back then, I didn't know anyone else that owned it. I didn't have anyone I could ask online for game tips. I didn't have anything besides the manual and my stunning lack of ingenuity when it came to computer games.

When I googled the Wizard and the Princess last night, I had the answer for how to get past the snake (and for that matter how to win the entire game) in several minutes.

A neat reminder of how much things have equalized since 1982 (as far as computer ownership and usage goes), how much information is online, and how easy it is to connect with others with arcane interests.

At this week's Libraries' / ITS lunch, the TLT surveys (and the possibility of the Libraries contributing questions) came up.

While I had received information from these surveys in some campus ITS presentations, I'd never actually looked at the full results myself. They are fascinating---a localized version of the EDUCAUSE studies, if you will. I feel incredibly dumb that I overlooked these until now.

Today, I looked at the two most recent surveys---the Fall 2006 student survey and the Spring 2007 Faculty and TA survey. There's lots there to see and think about.

A few findings that struck a chord with me:

Google Scholar and Wikipedia.
Both surveys asked about usage of these resources. Approximately 54% of students said they used or relied on Wikipedia for course research and approximately 36% of students said they used or relied on Google Scholar for course research. 20% of faculty and TAs discouraged students from using Wikipedia for research assignments; 4% discouraged use of Google Scholar. The really interesting finding here is that almost 35% of faculty and TAs had not heard of Google Scholar (only 6% had not heard of Wikipedia).

Blogs and Wikis
Not surprisingly, the students are much more likely to use blogs and wikis than faculty and TAs. 24% of students blog, compared with 7% of faculty and TAs. Over 18% of students use wikis, compared with just over 1% of faculty and TAs.

Clickers. The students love them and feel they help them learn and retain content more effectively. Good thing we're going to have them in all of instruction rooms!

I've barely scratched the surface of what's there. Take a look at the full list of surveys for yourself!

Dan and I are working on a project to create Pageflakes for course-related subject guides. You can take a look at the once that I built for CAS 253 (Health Communication) here.

It was a lot of fun to make this, and hard to hold off on showing it to students until the end of class. I knew if I showed it to them earlier in class, they would ditch the strategies I was trying to impart, and dive into the quick links on the page. When I did show it, it was the first time I've ever unveiled a web page to Oohhss and Ahhhs! It is pretty snazzy. :)

This page combined lots of neat stuff--scripted links for individual journals, interactive page bookmarks, and the Red Plugoo! Incidentally, the launch of this page brought to light one problem with Plugoo. You can embed the same Plugoo code on multiple pages, which is great, but then you have no idea which Plugoo (on which subject-specific page) is sending you the IM message. Confusing times we live in, eh?

Have you seen this? I reserved my number. Think about it--one phone number, web-based access to voice mail....it makes a lot of sense.

Didja hear the one about Google becoming more open than Facebook? The fact that this effort is supposedly based around Orkut makes no sense to me, given that Orkut really hasn't caught on anywhere but Brazil and India. If you feel as confused as I did reading the main post, scroll down to the comments. Lots of expansion on this idea and thoughts on how Google could (or couldn't) make it work after all.

Twitterpated No More. Roy Tennant explains why he has (mostly) ditched Twitter. I have too. I agree with him that it does have utility at conferences or other big meetings where you're trying to keep track of multiple people and events. Otherwise, I wasn't very surprised by how quickly the Twitter bubble burst.

Karen Coombs beautifully explains why the future of web services isn't the library web site. My thoughts exactly.

Instead of focusing almost entirely on developing one monolithic, obsessively tweaked web site, let's place some of our efforts toward putting our web resources where our users are. We've started working toward this, with the Research JumpStart page, the iGoogle tab and the Facebook app. Next to come is the Libraries Firefox toolbar, and then, who knows what lies ahead? I hesitate to guess where we'll be even two years from now.

The trick, as Karen points out, is in placing this priority for exploring new ways of embedding ourselves online into the Libraries' traditional web workflow. These sites and technologies are ephemeral and rapidly changing. How do we keep up with innovatively placing our resources and services in our users' flow while also maintaining traditional portals like the library web site?

Lots of stuff to write about tonight (none of which I'd have to trudge through if there was a way to make Postalicious work on PSU blogs.) Oh well.

The NYT launched their My Times site. Think of it as iGoogle mashed up with the NYT's regular home page. Problem is, it doesn't pull in all of the other types of content that sites like iGoogle or NetVibes do. I started to create my own page, but got tired by the entire process. Google Reader and the NYT feeds are fine for me. Who is the audience they are building this for?

Chris Stubbs blogs about Facebook's impact on Greek rush at Penn State. Chris's insights on this were very interesting, but I'll confess that what drove this item into my toblog folder was its coverage of the difficulty one now encounters trying to mass email / mass invite on Facebook. We tried to leverage Facebook for the Open House this year, creating a group page, an event page, and even a page for the mascot, First Mate. I encountered lots of difficulty in trying to invite people to any of these online entities, beyond my own friend list (which, really is a bunch of librarians, and we know they're coming to the Open House!) So, yep, Facebook is pretty locked down in this manner. I almost sank to asking my PR interns to invite their friends to the event, but I just couldn't go there.

Dan Cohen's insights on the Perils of Anonymity. The AL tried to start fights on this topic not once, but twice in the past week, but I'm not going to go there (like I did a few weeks ago). Cohen's post says it all, at least from an academic librarian / faculty member's perspective.

More from the ToBlog folder tomorrow (and if you figure out how to make Postalicious work in this environment, let me know!)

Another terrific Open House is over. The Libraries' Facebook app was successfully launched. Librarians did DDR. Over 3200 students attended. Life is good!

According to Facebook (as of tonight) 412 students are using it. I think the App stats are only updated once a day, so we'll see what it's listed at tomorrow. I bet it will be over 1000.

Students' reaction to the App was somewhat interesting. Lots of students were VERY excited about the App. Several expressed relief that we were making tools for Facebook since they spent so much time there anyway. Others seemed thrilled by the simplicity of the App--that one click and a search box would connect them with articles or CAT records.

Some students had no reaction to it whatsoever. It made me wonder if I could direct them to install anything online and they would wordlessly comply. A select few seemed a little frightened that the library was thinking about Facebook. One student said, "I can't open up my Facebook! I'll get myself in trouble!" It took me a second before I realized she was talking about her profile content, and showing that in public. I reassured her that installing the app would not involve showing her profile, and she completed the activity.

And then there were the Luddites. I encountered several students who said they make a concerted effort not to involve themselves in anything online, including Facebook. Each of these people obviously has a much more full, rich life than I do.

It will be interesting to track usage patterns by the students who installed the App. Will students prefer their Facebook app over the Libraries home page or other means of accessing library resources? We're hoping to design and implement a follow-up survey with this pool of students that will begin to answer some of these questions.

The brand-spankin', sparkling new Penn State Libraries Facebook app is here! It is absolutely terrific, and big thanks go to Chris, Binky, Emily & Brad (i.e. the Facebook App Hot Team for everything they did to make this happen.

We're planning to launch the Facebook app formally at next week's Open House, where students (and interested faculty and staff) can add the application to their FB account, receive giveaways and register for cool prizes. (This is all happening in the Gateway Library, and there are 18 other Open House stops featuring other fun learning activities.)

But really, what can top the Facebook application? ;) Stop by and check out the fun on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week.

If you're going to blog, it should not be anonymous. Otherwise, what's the point? If you're not courageous enough to put your name out there with your ideas, then why should I take the time to read them? (Even though, I confess, I do love reading the AL's rants, and I also enjoyed visiting her Flea Libary.)

What's admirable about what the AL is that she's critiquing our profession in a very funny and dead-on manner. What isn't right, though, is that she's carefully hiding her identity while doing it. This all speaks to Steven Bell's post on ACRLog (which I can't find but will link when I do) about our profession's inability to have critical discourse about ideas and initiatives. Isn't this what lies at the heart of academia--taking advantage of the freedom to analyze, criticize, and participate in the process of refining and refocusing interesting ideas?

Feel free to fight with me about this. (Anonymously, or otherwise!)

Stephen and Lorcan created OCLC tag clouds for their blogs, inspiring me to make one too!

Here's mine:

A pretty cool tool! I was surprised that 'Facebook' and 'widgets' didn't come out bigger. Wouldn't it be interesting (or perhaps depressing) if you could do this for your daily conversation, and see which terms come out on top?

There's a web site Five.Sentenc.es that espouses the practice of never sending an email message longer than (you guessed it) five sentences. There's also four.sentenc.es, three.sentenc.es and for the truly brave (and brief) two.sentenc.es.

The idea is that you adopt this practice, and then put a link to your sentenc.es of choice in your signature line. (Ostensibly so that when your email recipient wonders why you responded to their complex list of questions with five sentences, a ready explanation will be visible.)

I like this idea, but I still wonder if it is unrealistic. Recently (especially since switching over to Gmail) I've also tried doing the Inbox Zero thing. It's not too hard, but I do sometimes forget messages I overzealously archived too quickly.

What I've been telling myself with email is that I don't need to be artful, I need to be brief. Anything longer than a paragraph or two won't be read. And if it takes me longer than five minutes to compose it, it needs to be a phone call. (Unfortunately, I usually figure this one out after I've sat trying to infinitely compose an intricate email.)

For email, less is more. Wouldn't you agree?

McMaster University Libraries put up a wiki for their First Year Experience students

I think this an an example of a good initiative that is using the wrong technology. Why does this need to be a wiki? From my cursory once-over, it looks to cover the same content found on static web pages. The only thing that seems interactive is the exhortation to comment on specific pages.

Why not use a blog (or a regular ol' web site) for this? Or, if you're going to use a wiki, set up pages that encourage students' participation---asking for favorite resources for specific assignments; tips on best places in the library to study, etc...

While I think trying new initiatives to reach out to first year students is always laudable, using the right technology for the content and purpose is also important.