Drupal and CCHS

Recently, my college elected to go to Drupal as its web content management system. For my college, I serve as a web coordinator, which means, I do not have the skill set required these days to create a good website– I have no programming skills of any sort– but I’m familiar enough to know how to get things done and if things can be done. During this re-design process I’ve been working with a designer who blows my mind. I am in awe of his skills and his sense of things.

Library as fetish

I just finished a free CE through the Medical Library Association on web 2.0 tools and apps. It was a self-paced 8-week course. In week 7, video sharing was on the menu. The participants were asked to search YouTube for library examples. If you are to do a simple “library” search, the first results is a video titled “library porno” and several that follow that idea.

I think it is pretty funny how this profession and these buildings with stacks of books has been so fetishcized. I’m certainly turned on by my profession, even if it isn’t in a sexual way. Since outreach is such a big deal in our circle, will the American libraries embrace this group of patrons and take advantage of this, um, this admiration of our mechanisms? Austria, I read, has already taken steps toward this, by offering a limited time only phone number that when dialed a patron heard erotica read to them. We can’t be too far off from this. Can we?

It’s something to consider, at least.

Week 8 — Mashups and a lot of other stuff

This week was a really loaded week, especially in terms of the requested blogging assignment.

I was asked to find a mashup that I appreciated and write about that. I chose one called Adactio (http://elsewhere.adactio.com/). While many of the listed most popular mashups had something to do with maps — I had no idea so many people were so fascinated by maps!–, I really liked the aggregate nature of this one. It is simple and ingenious. I also thought the point of it was perhaps a little more productive than some of the other ones.

Week 7 — podcasting and video sharing

Week 7 had all the CE participants considering podcasts and video file sharing sites, using YouTube as the prominent example of this, from the users point of view. The instructors shared a few podcast directory examples and Odeo– a service site for podcasting.

As a service provider, which is what librarians are, I have no problem seeing the value in content creation via these media. And, naturally, the next question is what method of distribution best serves users and the contents’ access. The internet has become the Library’s proven method, as the Library relies more and more on electronic versions of information. Offering our own information in audio or video formats is just an extension of our service. And, at this point in my career, I see less resistance to this as “how do we do this?”

Week Six — online photo sharing

The advantage I am seeing in many of these read/write web tools is that it is a matter of formed communities. What I mean by this is that there are utilities we can use in a self-hosted environment that produce the same results, for example, Gallery and Coppermine installs will provide similar infrastructures to flickr. What those installs can’t do is ensure a community or an audience for the content. flickr can do this. Flickr has succeeded in creating a space where users feel comfortable, either because of its ease of use, its features or its social position in their lives (all my friends are on it). Of course, the diversity represented at flickr also brings with it an incredible opportunity to explore. And, there are certainly some fantastic images on flickr. While many of my friends can waste away hours on FaceBook, I would rather be exploring what’s on flickr.

Week 5 — Office productivity, online

Surprisingly, I found this week the most challenging. There were a lot of options, a lot to consider, including features and how I might want to use such things. Here is a run-down of what I did and some of my considerations.

Week 4– social bookmarking

If there is one benefit to this week’s assignment it was to reveal to me that just because I have been a user of a certain app that does not mean I actually know what I am doing. That may depress some people. It challenges and inspires me though.

As many in this CE have noticed, it’s a big world out there where library meets the read-write web. I could not help but notice a bit of techno-stress for these things.

Week Three–Social Networking

* How can social networking be used by MLA to connect members?
* Should your library have a Facebook or MySpace page?
* Are there privacy concerns for individuals when using social networking sites?
* What did you like or not like about your experience with Facebook or MySpace?

There was some interesting reading for this week’s section on social networking. I particularly found Meredith Farkas’ blog post useful, and thought provoking. She provided some very well articulated opinions on if and how libraries should incorporate social networking types of functionality into our service section.

But I have to admit, I’m still torn on this issue. Not un-decided, necessarily, as much as over-stimulated about the issues and the practicalities of it. Not to sound too negative here, but the OCLC report really seemed well founded in what I have observed and considering my own position on these things. While I have a fairly solid conceptual foundation in what web 2.0 offers and examples of how people and institutions are using the functionality, my struggle always seems to come down to more practical aspects, mainly that of its implementation.

Week two– wikis

I am rushing through these first two sections in hopes of catching up with the class. I’ve finished the assignments for week two. I’ve contributed to the MLA class wiki for this CE by adding my blog’s and my wiki’s links there. I’ve did start a wiki. For this assignment, I decided on a personal project rather than make it for a professional endeavor. There were a number of reasons for this. The most important one for me comes from my own lack of knowledge and experience. Like many of the comments at the MLA blog, I am not thrilled with a hosted site full of ads. I’m sure, too, that my college, which has in the past not liked any off-campus hosted plan for website functionality, and university would not like that either. Since I wasn’t sure if there was a way of exporting the information using OPML or some other method, I didn’t want to go to the trouble of doing all the work in case that was true.

Testing linking here

In my first post, I had problems linking using the defaulted rich text editor. The linking button was greyed out; it was a featured locked off for me.– Has anyone else had this problem with WP.com?

What I’ve done to see if it is a work around is to update my profile to disable the rich text editor. And, here is the test.

MLA CE Web 2.0 blog

That seems to work.