#21 = YouTube

I like YouTube. The guys who thought up this site were geniuses, in my book. I frequently use YouTube, both as a viewer and as a creator. As a viewer, there are lots of interested videos you can find there. Friends and family send me links, or I'll see a link or embedded video on a blog I read pretty much on a daily basis. Sometimes I'll go there specifically looking for a video -- when you remember some cartoon you saw as a child that you want to see again or you're trying to tell somebody about a music video that starred Christopher Walken, and it's just easier to find the video and show it to them than try to explain it. I also have a YouTube account, and I've used it to share short video clips of my son with our family and friends. We have family who live all over the country, who we're not able to visit often, and many of them have been really pleased to be able to watch our son's growth and development. (I'm not going to link to it here, but if you want to see them, let me know and I'll email you the URL.)

As you saw on the 24Things post I made about YouTube, there are lots of library-related videos to be found. Here's one of my favorites. It was made for a video contest. I like it because library + zombies = awesome.



Here's a few other choice videos:

• I'm a Librarian; I'm an IT Professional - a spoof of the Mac vs. PC commercials (which I love).
  
• How to Make a Zine (using 1 sheet of paper)
• I also love the Chad Vader video series.

So, in short: Yay for YouTube! I can see lots of potential ways libraries could use YouTube. We need a good digital video camera first, tho.

Test document, posting from GoogleDocs.

Thing 19 - myspace, yourspace

I hate myspace. Not because it is pointless or un-useful (is that a word?). No, I hate it because it is ugly. It is terribly aesthetically unpleasing. And some people make their profile pages just horrendous to visit: hard-to-read text over jarring graphics, audio files that autoplay when I don't want them to, those stupid meme graphics. Just, ugh.

But I do have a myspace page. I signed up for it earlier this year. I did it mainly to promote the new library zine collection -- to connect with other zine publishers and people interested in zines, as well as other zine libraries and librarians. I have used it to announce events and talk up some of the zines in our collection. I don't know how much my actions on myspace have resulted in drawing in new patrons to the library, but I have received a few zine donations because a publisher found me on myspace. Makes it worth it to me. I don't frequent the site, though (I already have plenty enough places to keep track of online). I try to drop in every couple of weeks, look for new "friends" to add every couple of months.

So, for this exercise, I decided to explore Facebook. I've been thinking about signing up for Facebook for a while now, so I'll go ahead and bite the bullet. I am hoping that Facebook will help me connect with other library school grad students and maybe others in the library profession. (Networking is important!) But, realistically, I don't know how much I'll keep up with it. As I said, all I need is one more website to visit. I can't even keep up with the grad school-related Yahoo groups I'm subscribed to.

I do think Facebook is a more aesthetically pleasing site than MySpace. I'm still feeling my way around, so I don't know yet how useful it will be to me, or if I'll keep my profile active in the longrun.

Thing 18 - Google Docs, etc.

I've already used Google Docs for a couple of things. Most recently, someone with YCAC created a spreadsheet using Google Docs for she and I to jointly edit / access, which we can use to track registration and attendees to our zine workshops. I found it very easy to use -- working quite similarly to Microsoft Excel. I was really surprised by the variety of tools offered by Zoho. I'm planning to try out its database option to see how well it works.

I don't think that these applications are particularly helpful for in-house staff use -- if we need to share a documents, we can do so by saving it to the Everyone folder on the network. However, they could be helpful for collaborating with folks outside of the library (like in my YCAC example above).

From a personal perspective, I've been thinking about starting to use Google Docs or a similar application in publishing my zine. I have multiple people who contribute content to the zine, which they usually send me as a MS Word attachment. But some people don't have access to Word (or Open Office), or they instead send the text within the body of an email, which messes up the formatting. Having them post their content to a site like Google Docs and then allow me to access it might be an easier, less messy way of handling their submissions. If the database application is versatile enough, I may use that for the zine, too, to share contact & assignment information with the review staff.

Thing 17 - LPLS wiki

Well, I suppose that I could mention here that I set up the wiki, including the front page, the sandbox page, and the Checking In Materials entry (as an example) and call it a day. But I'll go an extra mile and throw up a couple of additional entries: the opening procedures and closing procedures for MGL Library.

One thing I like so much about this wiki, a feature that I think will make it very useful, is that it's searchable. Have a question, type in a term, find pages that are related. Awesome! And pbwiki is a very easy site to use -- much easier than some other wiki sites I've visited and explored.

If it isn't obvious yet, I am really excited about this project. This week's activities are the ones I have been most looking forward to. I've been wanting to create a staff wiki for some time now, and this Learning 2.0 program was a great excuse to finally get it going. I'm glad to see that some of you fellow L2.0 folks are into this idea too -- now we just have to convert the rest of the staff!

Thing 16 - I like wikis

I do! I think it's a great concept and I love that it's so popular. You can harp about the questionable reliability of wikipedia all you want, but I use it all the time for general information. Sure, I don't consider it to be on the same authoritative level as Encyclopedia Britannica or the OED, but I do think it is a good resource. I also use another wiki, ZineWiki, which is a wiki dedicated to zines. I've made a few entries and edits there. Here's the entry about the zine I publish, Zine World. Here's wikipedia's entry on ZW.

Anyway, about wikis in libraries: I think there are a lot of possibilities for using wikis. I think the sites mentioned in this exercise are good examples. I like the subject guide / pathfinders idea. And Library Success is a great resource. I could see wikis also being useful in a school setting -- for group projects, class assignments, syllabuses, etc.

I really hope that we're able to build a comprehensive staff resource using the wiki. I've already given a few other ideas about what we could add: procedures, instructions, library forms (with instructions), reference resources (website links, links to entries in the catalog, etc.), training guides, party planning. I'm interested to see what you guys suggest!

for my reference

Flickr pool of zines in libraries