OPAC, AquaBrowser, Library Thing,...just get me the book!

I have the distinct privilege of working in a library with a generic OPAC system. This means that any time I order books from a vendor, the processing I get will be rather minimal--there's only so much that is clear with the system we use. I did not choose this software, and after one year, am considering shifting softwares since the yearly upkeep cost is close to $1800 (a good part of any budget) and we don't get that many bells and whistles for that price.

I LOVE looking at what other schools find. I LovE looking at the Open Source products from LibLime, like YakPak. I love seeing how other libraries make their cataloging work. It makes me believe that such a thing is possible, even if it doesn't happen in our school (at the moment). Joyce Valenza's virtual school page is certainly made for the user, though the actual OPAC seems a bit more confusing in its access... Queens Library is so...pretty please can I have that instead? I'd be much happier if mine looked anything like that. During the next year, the library work in is scheduled to move, I hope that when that happens I will also be able to change the OPAC to one that is more accessible and user friendly. This may be a larger goal that I hope for, but perhaps something better can come of it. I want to get the book in the students' hands, with as few roadblocks as possible.

I'm a closet cataloger, I really like a lot of this things about it. So I often get caught, when looking at OPACs at the cataloging side of things...can I organize sets of users? How do I export or import files into the program. In our class discussion, this isn't the stuff we talked about. And Linda even warns us to steer clear of thinking about us as the user. To an certain extent, she is totally right. To another extent, as a librarian, the OPAC holds lots of information, and users (in this case the librarian) should be able to easily access information like circulation for the month or recent acquisitions. Again, the OPAC we use is filled with logic statements, the support staff I call always seem a bit befuddled themselves. I guess I just want to put in my two sense for the ability for the Librarians to use the program as well. Perhaps there is a correlation between usability for Librarians and accessibility for patrons.

As a final thought, I don't know if sites like LibraryThing, GoodReads, and Shelfari are the answers for libraries and their users. They have their own set of problems, including the social aspect and tagging,though perhaps those problems are also assets and are certainly refreshing. In the virtual world they help some see the books, but do they help on actually GET the book? On this part, I think I need to think more...

Roadblocks

When writing a draft of a story or poem, it's really important to keep writing and not look back on the work and start editing. Once the editing begins, it's possible for a person to lose the real story to the turn of a phrase or the flip of a sentence. The idea should be the primary goal during the draft process, the process of discovery. I haven’t always perceived my role as a learner similarly, but as I write this, the goal of this class becomes clearer. This is a class for discovery and for experimentation. It is about the possibilities.
Once we are actually working in libraries, however, we move from the draft phase to the editing. The reality of editing makes it hard for me to embrace the exploration of technological possibility. In my head, I keep hearing the voices of my school’s Tech Chair and administrators. I am taken aback by my naturally skeptical nature and my own hesitations about technology and change.

I want to be enthusiastic and optimistic, but I find myself focused on the ways in which things can’t work. I think about the physical roadblocks: the cables that aren’t movable, the tables that just won’t fit anywhere else, the computers that HAVE to be somewhere else. I remember the logistical issues that make adding software or updating the card catalog long, difficult processes. In my position, I have not been given the privileges that would make these tasks under my immediate control. I have to put my requests to others and justify every decision. I have to decide what is truly worth entering the bureaucratic maze.

I also face additional human roadblocks in the form of teachers who are too overworked or old-fashioned or scared to embrace new technology. So, in this class, when I should be charging forward, dazzled by the prospect of new ways of teaching and learning, I find myself imagining the glazed over faces of the teachers to whom I’ll be introducing ANOTHER new way of doing things.

Some of these roadblocks are just plain out of my control, others require a little bit of patience and perseverance, and still others reflect my own insecurities, perspective, and understanding that there is only so much that can be accomplished in a day or week or year. As I challenge the editor within myself who keeps trying to revise the draft before it’s done, I realize part of my frustration is because I LOVE some of the things I’ve been learning. I can see the potential of where we can take students—if the conditions are just right. I have to remember to keep being the writer, the learner, the explorer. I wish my mind didn’t echo “roadblock” each time I hear a new idea because I really want to put some of these ideas into action. I want to be more open to the ideas, to push my library work and myself.

I’m hoping that I’m making at least a baby step with my innovative project. I could really see it working, and hope it does. I’m starting with something small and focusing on a perceived need which might be resolved via del.icio.us. Since none of the school computers can hold bookmarks on their computers, I can use technology to help teachers and students easily access the items they often refer back to. Enter del.icio.us/Feehanlibrary. It's a start at turning roadblocks into speedbumps.

I think my realistic (okay, and somewhat skeptical) nature has a place in library science and particularly in terms of technology. I just have to be sure to use it to a positive end. I need to ask questions such as: What is the greatest need in my academic setting? Where can I make a positive difference? What is possible within the given constraints? If I ask the right questions and don’t let myself become overwhelmed with thoughts of “this will be more trouble than it's worth”, I think I can make the process of learning more powerful and efficient for the students and teachers at my school. Who knows? We could all be surprised.

Long time no blog

Finally, I've found the time to read all the articles that have been piling up in my Google Reader. Yeah to scanning what the NYT is talking about. Yeah to reading articles on Pottermania including those in the Boston area. Yeah to reading comments by other classmates. (Though I wish my Reader could easily allow me to comment on those blogs via the reader.) Yeah to seeing the current additions to Threadless.

In addition, I've finally gotten a chance to read the articles about hipster librarians, and check my work email, and my library moodle page. I've even made progress on one tech encyclopedia entry. This weekend definitely had some great moments of accomplishment.

Maybe I'm getting back into the swing of things for this class. It's not as though I stopped working on it/ for it (I haven't), but the immediate thrill of the blog is gone. Now it's time for consistency, follow-up, regular maintenance. Like reading shelves, it can be necessary but daunting. And once I'm off the track for a while, where do I start in getting back on?

One of my classmates, librarygirl101, suggested that the library teacher should send daily tech emails to teachers. Perhaps this would be a great service, but I can honestly say that finding a new tech advancement to daily email about would be a challenge for me. In addition, I don't know if I could succeed with that kind of regularity. Last year, I did send messages to teachers, regarding new materials and new databases, but not daily. I tried for every quarter, and felt lucky to get that much done. Now that I've finished my first year in a school I can honestly say, the first year is a bear. There is so much I wanted to do that I still haven't done, and so much that landed on my plate that I had no idea would be there. Perhaps the best advice I got before starting was from my mom who said,

"don't do anything in the first year you won't be willing to do in the future."

It's another version of first impressions stick, I suppose, but it's helpful to remember that a base can be created and built upon, but much of the first year is about establishing the base.

I want to write more on RSS feeds and my impression of Google docs, but I feel they need their own entry. I figure this is enough for now. Also, I put a twitter feed on my blog page when trying to arrange a podcast badge for a friends show, and I want to take it off, so I should do that now.

the 2.0

I've just realized that some people might think that my covs2.0 is an homage to Brotherhood2.0, but that wasn't my intention. In fact I didn't think of that connection until a friend mentioned it. My 2.0 was meant to reference the discussions in the world of the library of Library2.0 and Web2.0, which I understand to be the upgrades of these systems into the rest of the world.

Here I am in this class using a Wiki regularly, reading blog posts, discussing servers and FTP...all under the guise of the library! In some ways, it makes me feel really lucky that I decided to become a librarian now, because I am beginning to understand that this "upgrade" is here to stay and so we must alter the way we think about libraries and reconsider what it means to research, to locate information, and to serve patrons.

In all this new technology (and even the old stuff), I still can't get my head around some of it. I can't quite figure out what to do with the "public" aspects of so much of it. If I make a del.icio.us page for my teachers and students, would I need to reconsider what I have on my own, if perchance they found mine? My name is out there now in the blogosphere and interweb. Does 2.0 mean more individual exposure? If so, are we always aware of what image we put out? It makes me think that more of us (but especially schools and libraries and libraries in schools) need publicists. Perhaps social networking is a type of backlash toward the society pages of the 40s, 50s, and 60's. Now there's a thesis for someone? Is social networking more than a society page upgrade?

Tech transformations

Everytime I check Twitter, there's a new article for me to read. Everytime I read that article, it leads me to another article, and so on and so on. Suddenly, I've spent hours surfing through articles on the librarians at ALA or reviews from the NYT or links to ways to make an avatar on Yahoo!, and then I find the world of podcasts that needs to be explored, like Grammar Girl, and their corresponding websites. I also found a podcast from ProQuest explaining how to access newspapers from home via the internet. How can I create those mini-videos to embed on our website? Those types of tutorials could be sweet.

Then I find new blogs from AASL to read where, instead of talking about ALA, they are talking about NECC, and some comments bring up ideas that don't seem revolutionary to me, though the blogs approach them as such. It makes me realize that as behind in the times as I am in terms of certain technologies, I am not completely ignorant. I've kept my ears and eyes open to learning where people are going with computers, and certain softwares.

As my del.icio.us page attests to, I've found a way to personally use that site for a year now. Though I still struggle with how to integrate some of those/these technologies into the classroom. In listening to the Grammar Girl podcast I think, the English department could really benefit from these, and I wonder what other podcasts I could introduce to the faculty, how they could livestream them so it doesn't take server space, and if there's room on the school server to create podcasts of our own.

Later, I was watching my favorite video blog (vlog) of John Green (author of Looking for Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines)and his brother Hank Green called Brotherhood 2.0 and what is Hank doing but reading. The next day, John's talking about ALA. But back to Hank, in his vlog he's reading The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman, and he questions the acceptability of adults reading young adult books. What follows in the comments is lots of cheering for YA novels as well as thick discussion of the upcoming movie for The Golden Compass. Being the surfer I've been all day, I head to the website, and try to create my own daemon. Here's what they gave me, a jackel:



I've tried to embed the image from the site, and hope it works. I figure that is a test in and of itself. I can't see the image when I use Firefox, but can when I use Safari, so please let me know what happens when you read this post.

Seems a little mean to me (the choice of jackel), and apparently it can be changed but...I know this site is created to promote the movie, but there are other books like Lemony Snicket which certainly take advantage of the world wide interweb to help promote their books. How well to libraries and librarians pay attention to this? It seems we should.

Maybe, after all this searching, my real question becomes: what's the priority? Where do libraries and librarians enter the tech world and how much is truly necessary to stay current and provide the best services to users? How do we become efficient surfers so that students can learn from us, how to move through the interweb with limited distraction. Maybe distraction is fine (it is, really), but all the surving and exploring and discovery takes time. What is the minimum a library needs to know in order to serve the most people?

A few ways technology followed me to NJ

Took the bus to NJ for some graduation festivities This means that for days I was away from my computer. Still, I found myself talking about technology, libraries, and schools while I was traveling. I even observed some various things. Here are a few:

1. On the bus, I sat next to a college student from Brazil who uses Skype to talk to his family back home. He and I also talked a bit about the difference between libraries in Brazil and those at his college campus. We also talked about Wikipedia, which he found to be a great resource when it came to looking for information about musicians and other cultural things. He seemed to like the way Wikipedia allows a person to maneuver around an entry to find other related information. In this way connections are made that many of the best "scholars" in a field seem ignorant of.

In addition, I asked him if he went to the Library at his college. The word on the street is that students don't go to the library much anymore. And he said "No." But when I asked if he used Databases he livened up saying "I use Jstor for everything!" Jstor is only available by subscription, so the library must get this database to assist their students. In other words, in today's world, I find it believable that students would never enter the library space during their academic career (still a bit sad, but believable), what I don't find believable is that library resources go unused by an academic community. Several schools have IM accounts to provide assistance to those at home. Others make sure that their database access applies outside the library walls. Those who use these services are still using the library. Aren't they?


2. Before I even read the student tech.encyclopedia entry on Facebook, I watched my recently H.S. graduated cousin rapidly log in to her Facebook account, simultaneously chat with like three people and then run out of the room again. She (or her twin sister, I really am not sure which) did this on various occasions during my time there. I can't think of a time I heard them on the phone, but they certainly were checking their profiles, their friends' profiles and making plans via the vast world of the interweb.

Then when I got home last night there was a Law & Order about a girls "B-friends" page where she complained about her mother and essentially put a hit request into virtual cyberspace. It made me wonder how much my own cousins say and expose of themselves on Facebook. It also reminded me of the culture of "dangerous internet" the media and adults seem to push. In some ways, a person's cyberlife seems to be a dirty little secret.

This morning, I read an old NYT article about Webkinz and Club Penguin. Seems the social networking is going further down the ladder and now there are sites to get 8 & 9 year olds in on the act. At my favorite toy store in NJ, there was a big sign in the window announcing, "WE HAVE WEBKINZ." I thought it was like the beanie baby craze. I didn't realize the stuffed toys give a person access to an online character. That's right, the toy has a special code which can be used to access an online avatar for more interaction with your toy. Somehow, this reminds me of Gremlins.


3. On the train in to NYC, my recently H.S. graduated cousin helped me program my phone to use T9 texting so that I could write messages more quickly. This was interesting in part because recently, the YALSA blog had an article explaining that young people prefer not to use T9, as they already know what letters are on which keys and how many strokes it would take to write their message.

Of course, my cousin is just one person, but she seemed a bit fan of the T9. And with its help her fingers flew across her phone, sending out notes at lightening speed. I've now added the T9 to my messaging, and must admit that I'm not so sure I like it. In some ways it's faster, but alternate or unusual spellings really slow the whole thing down. In addition, I have to keep figuring out how to change "On" to "No" or "them" to "then," etc.


4. I think my mother may be a YouTube addict. This isn't really true, but whenever she hears of something funny on there, she then wants everyone to see it. Granted she finds great things, but she did run into an interesting dilemma last February when she showed my niece a Panda Sneeze video that she found great. Later, when my niece wanted to find the video herself, she ended up alone on YouTube. My niece is in elementary school, and while YouTube would have some content appropriate for her age, it also would not. While my mother's intent was honest and good, it made my sister-in-law nervous. Is the computer the new babysitter?

Of course, YouTube is rife with candidate videos, and this is one reason it hasn't been blocks at the HS I work at. This doesn't stop media personalities from commenting on these videos. At dinner one night news correspondants were busy talking about the YouTube videos of Barak Obama and Hilary Clinton. At the same time NBC plans to create videos to help students with AP exams. The article on this was linked in Twitter, and I had to go back pretty far to find it again. Anyway, read more about NBC's plan here.


5.My grandfather's house has no internet access, no cable, and only one working TV. It was nice to be there. He missed all the graduation festivities for health reasons, and it was nice to pull out my digital camera to show him pictures of the event. With the help of a magnifying feature, I was even able to show some details I hadn't even realized I captured. He got to witness some of the events, and I was really glad I could share those pics with him. I placed a few of the pics on my Flickr page, but the majority will go into a Snapfish album, because I've found that Flickr is for socializing for me...Snapfish is for sharing pics that people will want to print. At least that's how I use those two programs. There are so many programs, it seems necessary to me to determine each one's personal usefulness or else, why use it at all?


I suppose there were more simple technologies I encountered this weekend as well, but these are just a few thoughts on the matter. Time to go out in to the real world...

the better mousetrap?

I am only slightly proficient in several technologies. Apparently I've gone for breadth, and it makes me wonder if depth within technology is really possible. Learning one system well only leads to the end of that system. At the school I work at they went from web pages to moodle, and next year they are introducing edline. What does one do? I find all this very confusing. Also, it's hard to keep up. This is a very steep learning curve. I still can't manage to watch videos on my Firefox browser, and I wonder if that is due to security restrictions made long long ago to avoid pop-ups. True, I don't get pop-ups, but I can't watch videos either.

Friday, the Urban Dictionary word of the day was "digital immigrant." I would argue, based on the definition, that I am not one of these, but maybe I am. I know YouTube. I just don't really have much time to view items on it. (Plus the aforementioned browser issue). The site also makes me nervous as it is a breeding ground for copyright infringement, even by those with the best of intentions. Just check out the "March of the Librarians" or the montages made by Hank and John Green for Brotherhood2.0.

I admit it. I find the world of technology overwhelming. Just when I get used to one element, another tech-door opens. Now I have a new phone that can work as an mp3 player, when all I want is a phone phone since my whole choice of purchase was to replace a phone that was giving me bad reception to the max. Half my calls weren't going through. I have my ipod video for songs and movies. And soon, there will be the iphone. It sure is pretty, but...Does one really need a phone to play music? Of course, the ringtones on this phone are horrible and it makes me wonder if the mp3 option would improve that. All the photos on my old phone did not transfer over with my old phone numbers. Gone is the picture of my grandfather in a pilgrim hat. Nevermind the half-life of these toys, what is the life life? If they can transfer numbers, why not pictures too? Still for all the overlap, I can't help still wanting one of those swank PDAs so I could update my calendar with the swish of a stylus. This tech-desire frightens me.

Maybe the term for me is ludite-in-training. Of course, I'd be lost without my phone, my Mac, my digicam, my regular unlined moleskin...

Begin again

So begins my new blog for my course in using technology in the Library Classroom. This is my 3rd or 4th blog...but I never manage to get them very far off that ground. I was going to use one I created for book reviews, but it seemed almost wrong to return to that blog and do something else with it.

This is fine though, I'll give it another try. With less than a week left of the school I work at, this could prove a pleasant distraction during the summer. Of course, all my tech problems usually happen during the school year, what will it be like without all that? I'm not sure.

I spent a good amount to this afternoon trying to figure out Twitter, GoogleTalk, and finding feeds for Google Reader. In the end, I created a gmail account (yes, I am one of the few who didn't have one yet), and feel like I'll have to start the process all over again. Once I get my Skype account running though, I should be able to turn in the assignment all this is for on the course Wiki. Fun stuff.