Jason and the Moving Pictures

Blog posting. Right. How far behind am I? A bit, I reckon. Let's knock a few of these out. Videos of me doing crazy stuff anyone?

Jason and The Somewhat Clever Yet Monotonous Title

Dude, it's Monday. I can't be expected to come up with witty post titles this early in the week.

You know, sometimes it can be pretty hard to come up with feasible library-based uses for some Web 2.0 applications. I think Kristi has the right idea with the Becker Del.icio.us accounts, and the Becker Blogs and RSS Feeds are a great boon to the web savvy patron. When it comes to something like Flickr, which has a lot of great uses for the individual, I struggle a little bit in my thoughts on how a Becker Flickr account could be beneficial.

And then I had a cup of coffee. So, here a few thoughts:

First of all, why Flickr?

Simply put? Everyone else is doing it. Seriously, that’s how the internet works sometimes. You join up with a site because the rest of your family is already there, or your friends, or your old high school buddies, your study group partners. It’s a bit “lemming” in mentality, sure, and, yeah, there are other photo sharing websites out there (Picasa, Adobe Photoshop Express, Photobucket, etc.). Still, if you were to do a search for “Photos” on Google, the first thing you’d get is Flickr, and that’s kind of important, especially when Google accounts for more than 75% of general web searches in 2007. If you are going to share information, whether its text, images, video, or audio, you must put that information in places where people looking for it can find it. Folks are using Flickr. Let’s go where THEY are.

Second, what the heck do we use it for?

While we have a very nice looking library here at Becker, I really doubt anyone is going to want to click through pictures of our atrium or many fabulous study carols we house here. We need to give users what they would come here for in the first place, images pertaining to the practice, study, and history of medicine.

The first thing I thought of is Archives and Rare Books. While we already have several online galleries and exhibits, as well as an image search engine, by placing our collections on a more open platform, we not only add another venue for others to search through our image catalogue, we add functionality like RSS feeds, tagging, easy linking, tools for embedding, and bookmarking through “favorite-ing” . Not only that, but by providing links back to the Becker Library or Wash U Med School website in the same way we put our records together for the Missouri Digital Initiative, we do a fair amount of extra promotion for the school, which is always nice.

I linked to this a while back, but take a look at what the Library Of Congress is doing with their photo archives. I believe all of it is devoid of copyright, which differs from our collection, but it’s something to think about.

P. F. Andersen of Web Junction has a list of different library-based uses for Flickr you might want to read. The University of Michigan’s MLibrary 2.0 has some other helpful links, too.

Jason and The Visions of Futures Past

I thought this was pretty amusing, considering all the internet integration going on in libraries today. In 1962, a vision of the future was created by Arnold B. Barach in the book "1975: And The Changes To Come". The book contains a good handful of wonderful photographs documenting the march of technology. Here's the one on the new fangled Reference Finder:

Every 60 seconds, day and night, approximately 2,000 pages of books, newspapers, or reports are published somewhere in the world; and the output is increasing by leaps and bounds. Libraries will ultimately be forced to use computers such as this for locating documents and references, since it will be so difficult otherwise to keep up with the printed material.

There are plenty of other "future" visions at this link. Personally, I'm adding the lack of Toaster Bacon to the list of things I'm disappointed with the "future" about, right up there with the lack of jet packs and moon colonization.

Jason and The Recipe for Danger

We've got a couple of Catch Up weeks in Learning 2.0, and that makes me think of ketchup, which makes me think of tomatoes, which makes me think this is the worst segue way to ever make my fingers dance across a keyboard. Sigh.

When I was a younger man, full of promise and potential, I ate like crap. Seriously, if it wasn't Ramen noodles, Macaroni and Cheese and ______ (tuna, frozen veggies, sawdust, etc.) , or some horrible concoction derived of hamburger, pasta, and whatever was left of the bloody mary mix in my fridge, then I probably wasn't eating.

It wasn't until I started cooking for a fine dining establishment and wanting to keep a girlfriend for more than, say, two weeks that I really started looking into being a better chef in my kitchen. Nowadays, I get excited about cooking and eat a lot better. Or just a lot. Whatever. And you know what helps me come up with new and exciting ideas for über-tasty meals?

That's right, kids. Web 2.0. If you're a foodie, here's a few web sites you might want to look into.

First up is Tastespotting.

Tastespotting is a kind of blog aggregator. Folks find good looking recipes on the various food blogs all over the 'net and send them Tastespotting's way. Tastespotting then takes all those suggestions and posts a description of the recipe and a photo of the finished product. Just click on the photo of the food stuff that interests you and voila! The recipe is right there for your perusal.

Tastespotting also makes it easy to bookmark the entries you want for future use. Say I'm interested in trying my hand at making this beast:

You'll notice at the bottom right corner is a little star marked "Delicious" (no, this has nothing to do with the social bookmarking system we learned of previous). Now, let's say I want to save this recipe for a special occasion, like a Thursday or something. I just click that corner so that it looks just like it does in the picture above. When I come back to the site, all I have to do is go up to the search bar on the top right corner of the screen:

If I click on "Stars" in the "Sort By" section, Tastespotting will bring up any recipe I've marked. Conversely, I can click the other corner of any photo to "86" the recipe and report any problems.
You'll also notice there's an RSS feed for your feed reader, should you want constant tasty updates. If you find you really like it, I suggest signing up for an account so that your starred recipes don't go away if you do something like clear you browser cache or something.

Epicurious is another Web 2.0 recipe and food site, only this one is packed to the gills with features. Run by the publishers of Gourmet and Bon Appetit magazines, Epicurious offers you a ton of recipes and cooking tips, plus wine and food dictionaries, How To videos, RSS feeds for everything from what you're having for dinner tonight to brand new recipes and food news, email newsletters... It's got the works. HIGHLY recommended.

Actually, the Internet is flooded with food sites ranging from every taste and kind. Here's a few more to take a look at during the next couple weeks of Catch Up & Play:

All Recipes
Indian Food Forever
Group Recipes
The Food Network
Simply Recipes
BakeSpace

Good luck, and good eatin'.

Jason and The Flickr of Hope

After much thought on the matter, I've decided to just give you access to the Flickr site I already have. I'm pretty sure there's nothing in there that could be used against me. In fact, the only things you're likely to find out about me are:

1. I hang out in bars. A lot.
2. I am a geek.
3. I take my Zombie Squad stuff very seriously.
4. I have a Photo Club.

Above is a photo of my ladyfriend and I in Chicago last year. Cutie, ain't she?

Linkblogging 3: This Time, It's Not Linkblogging 2

- James Carson, Reference Librarian for the Lake-Sumter Community College Libraries, has put together a couple of amazing tutorial videos for The Cochrane Library and CINAHL. Simple, wonderful training tools, I must say. (via David Rothman)

- The Krafty Librarian give us an update on some of the changes coming to OVID at the end of the month.

- Jessamyn West asks the question "Why Should Libraries Be Social Networking?". For those of you asking yourself the same question, go take a gander.

- The National Network of Libraries of Medicine offers a traveling Technologies course for libraries across the country called "Geeks Bearing Gifts". Many of the resources they use for their class can be reviewed by downloading them from their web page.

- CollegeDegree.com lists 25 Useful Social Networking Tools for Librarians. CollegeDegree is worth looking over as well, with a ton of links to free online courses from many top level universities that you can take to brush up your knowledge and skills.

- Library Journal has named its list of library Movers and Shakers. Take a look at what some of the best librarians across the country are doing for their libraries, from community building to Web 2.0 integration. (We also get Library Journal here at Becker, should you want to look through the hard copy.)

- And finally, for your break time viewing pleasure, enjoy "Reading On a Dream", a musical about a library, set in a library full of unsuspecting patrons. Good times.

Jason and The Crew of the R.S.S. Feed

Oops. Skipped a step. Good thing Lucas is on the ball, otherwise I would've completely forgotten. So, RSS feeds and feed readers, eh? Hmmm.

Man, I could go on for days about how you should really embrace feeds and readers, how they're a part of any healthy internet routine, how it was as if the heavens did open and, lo, a beam of heavenly light did illuminate my pointy little head with inspiration when I first experienced the divine joy of RSS feeds, and how much extra bar time I've gained by using them. Lucas' post and the explanation on Becker's Learning 2.0 site, however, already give a pretty good overview of the advantages of getting friendly with feeds. And plus, as (I feel like) I keep saying, your mileage is going to vary on how you might use these tools, anyway.

As far as incorporating them into our patrons' internet usage, however... Well, here's a couple things I was thinking of.

First off, most of the Electronic Journals we have have and allow access to have RSS feeds available in varying degrees. For instance, the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism has three feeds available, one for the current issue, one for recent issues, and one for advance access to special "ahead of print" articles. Applied Psychopathology and Biofeedback has feeds for nearly way you could request information from them, from the latest articles to specific feeds for each of their article categories. While these features are a great way to keep students and faculty up to date with the latest research and information, there are a couple of things to keep in mind should we decide to pitch them to our patrons.

1. The patron must be on the Washington University Medical School Network or logged in to the Becker Proxy to have access to the Full Text. An oldie but goodie, that one. Same rule applies to the feedreaders and RSS feed. Sure, you can subscribe to the feed and even access the feed's information from anywhere, but if a patron want to be able to follow the link to the Full Text PDF, they'll have to be on teh network or proxy (or, of course, have their own subscription to the journal).
   
2. The feed the patron subscribes to must be the one provided when Linked Out from the Becker Medical Library website. A lot of our Full Access to the e-journals comes from places like ScienceDirect, rather than from the journal itself. So if a patron wanted to subscribe to the feed for Journal of American College of Cardiology though the ACTUAL JOURNAL SITE, they would not have access to the full text PDF. The patron must get to the journal through our record for the journal, link out from the web address provided, then subscribe to the feed provided there.

The second thing I wanted to address is something Lucas mentions in his post:

Just make sure you don't get too carried away, or at least have an efficient folder system to collect like topics, because you can receive a ton of stories you don't care about just to get to three or four really interesting and/or pertinent ones.

It's true. There are a ton of feeds out there for everything you can think of, all easily subscribed to. While most feed readers make it fairly easy to organize collections of feeds in different folders or tabs, it is still pretty easy to be inundated with a whole bunch of information you'll probably never use. It really pays to be frugal about what you subscribe to so that you don't get overwhelmed. Instead of immediately subscribing to something, bookmark the web site it comes from first. If you find yourself returning to that site a lot, THEN consider subscribing. It's a pretty good way of deciding whether or not a site is really useful or just a passing fancy.

One search engine that may be helpful to our patrons is MedWorm, a Medical RSS search engine AND Web-based Feedreader in one.



MedWorm aggregates information collected by thousands of medical related-feeds into one place and provides several filters and options to sift through it all. It also allows users to subscribe to specific search queries so that any new information that comes up pertaining to, say, the "reanimation of dead tissue" shows up in your personal reader. Medworm is also it's very own feedreader, too, should you choose to sign up for an account. You can get more details here.

And, as a side note, librarians can also get some help in the RSS field by clicking over to LibWorm, a MedWord clone that provides a search engine and feeds based on about 1,500 libraries, library blogs, and other library based web sites. A very useful tool for those interested in the library sciences. More details, anyone?

Jason and His Evil Arch Nemesis

Promises, promises...

Made with the Captioner Tool at Big Huge Labs.

Jason and the Anti-Social Social Network

Last week, I heard the point of privacy and all this Learning 2.0 stuff come up from a few different people. It's a valid concern. One of the major pushes of Web 2.0 is the the way it can easily share information with others on the Web, what a lot of people refer to as its "social" aspect. Throughout this experience, many of the websites we are and will be using will be putting information about ourselves out on the huge expanse of data known as the Internet.

On one hand, that can be a great and powerful thing. For instance, let's say I love monkeys (and I do). I can set up a blog about monkeys, collect a bunch of monkey links on Delicious, subscribe to every monkey blog's RSS feed, set up a Google Alert to email me with the latest news on monkeys, search for pictures of monkeys on Flickr and post some photos of my own, have a monkey podcast loaded directly to my iPod every morning, join a social network dedicated to monkeys...

You get the picture. I'm just CUH-RAZY about monkeys and I don't care who knows it. In fact, I want A LOT of people to know of my love of monkeys and that I crave more information about them so that they might share their monkey knowledge with me. Instead of roaming the streets like an insane person, stopping people on every corner and asking "Excuse me, but do you looooooove monkeys?!", I can go to the web and bring that information to me, simply by using a few of Web 2.0's applications.

On the other hand, maybe there are some things I want to do online that I really don't want others on the internet to pry into, like a personal social networking account I only use to communicate with old high school friends, a collection of links for a work project, a catalog of books I read or music I listen to, a group of photos of myself as a baby, or even just an online journal or diary. There are some great 2.0 tools that make doing things like those easy, but releasing all that info on to the web is a little intimidating.

Luckily, the tools we're learning about as we hurtle through Learning 2.0 have privacy settings you can configure to keep prying eyes out. By changing a few options, you can still get the experience of using Web 2.0 without sacrificing your anonymity.

Blogger, for example, gives you the option of not only restricting who reads you blog, but keeping everyone out completely. From the Dashboard of your blog, click the Settings link, highlighted below.

From here, scroll down to the options that read:

Choose "No" for both, then scroll down and click the Save Settings button. This will keep your blog from being listed on search engines and off of Blogger's front page. Once it's saved, go back to the top of the page and click Permissions just under the Post, Settings, and Layout tabs. In the middle of the screen, you should get a box that looks like the following:

Here, you can decide to limit who reads your blog. By choosing "Only People I Choose", you'll be given a box to enter in the email addresses of the readers you want, like your mother or co-workers. Blogger will then send those people an invite to the site which they can accept, allowing them to enjoy your blog posts. You can also choose "Only Blog Authors" which restricts viewing to only those who post to your blog. That way, as long as you're the only author, you be the only one who reads your blog.

There. You have achieved blogging anonymity. Now, I know this is a long post, but let's make Delicious private, too. Login to your account and, over there on the top right of the page, click the Settings link.

Scroll down to where it says Bookmarks and click the "Private Saving" link. It should take you to a page where you'll get the following:

If your box isn't checked, do that now by clicking on it and then clicking "change setting".

What this does is add the option to hide, or "not share", your bookmarks with the rest of the web. Try posting a link to Delicious. If you're posting from the web page, you should see a little check box next to the web address (url) field on the description page like this:

Clicking that box and then saving will make the bookmark visible to ONLY YOU and only when you log in. You'll have to do this every time you post a link, though, so keep that in mind should you need to use it.

Every tool we've used so far in Learning Web 2.0, from Blogger to Flickr, has a privacy setting for those who feel more comfortable not sharing their information with the world. Take some time to review your uses for each application and look through their settings page to determine what privacy level is right for you.

Jason and Linkblogging 2: Electric Boogaloo

- David Rothman has posted a couple of neat overviews, one on some great tools for editing, sharing, and converting docs to PDFs, and the other on Xoova, a new Web 2.0 app that allows users to search for doctors and physicians in their area by a number of different parameters.

- Steve Lawson gives us some interesting reading in his post Open Access and The Reference Librarian.

- The Library of Congress has joined up with Flickr (which I'm pretty sure is part of next week's "things"). Worth a look.

- The Carnegie Mellon University Libraries have created a couple of Flash-based games based on working in a library and created a space for them on their website. Not EXACTLY what it's like to work in Circulation at Becker, but a fun diversion should you have a spare minute.

Jason and The Upcoming Doom Stuff

Okay, let's take a break from library type 2.0 things. Let's talk about how Web 2.0 can help you "go out and do stuff" more efficiently.

Upcoming.org is a brilliant little website dedicated to listing upcoming events in both your city and around the country. Just by clicking over, you'll see that Upcoming already knows what city the computer you're at is closest to and gives you the most popular results for the next few days, as well as an event breakdown at the bottom of the page based on what kind of event the listing is for.

While Upcoming could be just a general listing site, what gives it the tangy flavor of Web 2.0 is its social aspect. When users sign up for an account, they can list their own events, bookmark the things they want to go to, and comment on shows to encourage others to attend.

Let's give a listing a shot. I need to put up a post for the next Zombie Squad blood drive, anyway.

(Zombie Squad, for the record, is a non-profit volunteer organization that promotes preparing for all kinds of disasters and emergencies, such as tornadoes, city-wide blackouts, earthquakes, etc. To help in our mission, we team up with the American Red Cross two or three times a year to throw a blood drive, one of the largest in the St. Louis area.)

By clicking the "Add New Event" link at the top of the page, we're treated to a simple form.

We're all used to forms around here, so we'll quickly fill this out. One of the nice features of Upcoming is the way it helps you fill out the Event Venue, so that you don't have to remember the address. If the Police Lodge wasn't already in its database, I could enter the info for it by clicking the "Not Listed" link, but...

It's there. Under two entries. Shrug. Oh, well. I never said the thing was perfect.

The rest is easy. Date and time, type of event (Social, for this one), and a place to enter in more information and the website. Something else of note is the post privacy setting at the bottom of the page. If you have a few friends hooked up to your profile and you want to invite them to a party or event that you don't want the world to know about, you can set the listing to "Friends and People I Invite Only" so that only those folks who need to know about it get the information.

Lastly, preview the post to make sure everything is correct and post. The world now has another way to find out how they can share their sweet, sweet life juices.

Now, let's look through the listings for somethi...HOLY COW, MIKE DOUGHTY, FORMER FRONTMAN FOR ONE OF THE GREATEST BAND'S OF THE 90'S, SOUL COUGHING, IS COMING TO THE GARGOYLE THIS MONTH.

I am going. No other option in this universe makes sense.

So, I click on the listing, and over in the right sidebar is this box:

Because I have an Upcoming account, I can click the "I'm Attending" button to let everyone know that I'm gonna be there and...

Hey, that's me! Woohoo! I can also choose "I'm Watching" if I'm interested, but undecided as to whether I want to go, or remove my profile from the listing if something like the Apocalypse happens to keep me from being there. I can also create a badge for my blog's side bar (like the one that's there now) to promote the information.

Play around with it and see what you think. You may be able to tell that there aren't a lot of St. Louisians on the services right now, but Upcoming is one of those website that deserves a look if you're a "person about town" always looking for something new to do.

Jason and The View From the Stacks

Jason and The Del.icio.us Possibilities

The Delicious blog has a post on the adoption and use of its network by teachers, instructors, and librarians, complete with a great collection of links to click through. Especially for those who struggle to see how we can apply it to our library. Also, you really ought to click over to the pages for Microarray Resources and Research Resources that Kristi has put together. She's done a really bang up job with them.

Speaking as just an internet user, I have to confess my total bias for Del.icio.us. About four years ago, I stumbled on the then fledgling website, joined up, and have had a chance to watch its evolution over the years. It's to the point where every time they make an announcement about some new feature or tool, I have to choke back tears of pride as I squeak out the words, "That's my boy."

It's a personal thing, though. Throughout my day, I find myself using many different computers: two, sometimes three, different machines at work, my desktop and laptop at home, one at the library if I'm doing research, etc. I'm also a bit of an information glutton, like a web link pack rat. I see something cool and/or intellectually shiny, I grab it, a behavior which has flooded my bookmarks folder with stuff to the point that my browser slows down. Not cool.

Del.icio.us allows me to do three major things that help me out enormously:

1. Save my link to an outside source. This way I don't have to worry about which computer I'm using or which flash drive I've taken with me. And, heck, I'm only going to check my links when I'm online anyway. It just makes sense to keep them there.

Also, if anything (God forbid) were to happen to my one of my computers at home, such as a hard drive crash, the information I needed saved is still existent on the site. This keeps me from spending hours researching websites AGAIN and wanting to stab myself in the brain meats.

2. Organization of links. Tagging is awesome. How awesome? Totally.

And, boy, do I need it. Just looking at my link collection now, I've got close to 1,000 links in the beast, and it's still early this morning. All of my links are tagged with multiple keywords I can use to find just what I'm looking for.

For instance, I want to write a piece on the gender role bias in female characters featured in North American comic books...

Wait, wait. I'm not actually going to talk about it. Come on back.

So, I'm researching this topic. I seem to remember running across something that I tagged recently on the subject. If I look over at my sidebar tags at Del.icio.us, I click on "comics.commentary", then on "+" next to the "women" tag on the next page page (or I could just type "comics.commentary+women" in the bar at the top of the screen). Oh, hey! There's an Alan Moore article I tagged on the topic. Fantastic.

3. The Subscription Feed. As I mentioned before, I really like saving links. Sometimes, though, I'll save something I don't have a chance to read when I find it. By subscribing to my own Del.icio.us RSS feed and plugging it into my newsreader (like Netvibes, Google Reader, or Bloglines), I get a reminder every time I post to the site so that I can go back and filter through the stuff that I collected. It's a good feature for when I don't have a lot of time or when my ladyfriend is telling me to get off the stupid internet and spend some cuddle time on the couch. Which, you know, is a lot more fun than research, anyway.

Also, EVERY page created by a tag has its own RSS Feed. So, if I or someone else wanted to track only links that I tag "comics.commentary", they could just subscribe to the feed for that tag and get only the information they want. For example, I'm a Wash U Med Student and I'd like to find out about every database Becker has access to pertaining to EMI. I could click through to the appropriate page, then subscribe to the feed to be instantly updated should Kristi and the library add a new one. Nice.

With this Web 2.0 stuff, it all comes down to how you use the web. We all have different ways of researching, as do our patrons. Del.icio.us is just another example of how 2.0 can facilitate our mission to get information into the hands of our students and staff.

Jason and His Trusty Sidekick, Linkblogging

- Librarians' RX has a great post from a couple of new medical librarians. They list a few tips and tricks they've picked up, as well as some links at the bottom of the post that you may find useful.

- Over at The Krafty Librarian, an interesting question is asked. It seems the new edition of the USMLE Step 3 came with a card, the USMLE Step 3 Recall, allowing for the download of an audio version of the book, rather than having a CD slapped inside it. After getting some clearance copyright-wise, TKL is looking for some advice on how to distribute the audio version properly and in a way that is easy for both patron and librarian. Any thoughts? While the quick fix in the comments section certainly works, it doesn't really take advantage of the technology available. Definitely something to think about as we hurtle towards the future of an electronic library.

- Surgery videos? MedlinePlus has them in spades. Quality break time watching, I assure you.

- The MLA has a Task Force On Social Networking? Really? Huh. This is a little old, but reading some of the discussion points on the role of Web 2.0 and Social Networking in the Medical Library will get you thinking.

- Have you completed Thing #7 yet? The Librarian In Black talks a bit about LibraryThing's new feature, LibraryThing Local, and how it could be used to bring libraries together.

- Three words: Pimp My Bookcart. We should really think about entering this summer. Really.

Jason and The Facebook of Prophecy

Friends:Social Networking Sites for Engaged Library Services brings us news of two new Facebook Applications that allow you to search PubMed, PubFace and PubMed Search.

I have a confession. I loathe Facebook with a passionate hate I reserve for dog fighting enthusiasts and James Van Der Beek. But, hey, this is Learning 2.0, and these are tools that, theoretically, can help us get information in the hands of our patrons. I'm willing to put my burning disdain on the shelf for a moment and try these suckers out.

Let's begin with PubFace.

Simple search bar, nothing fancy. Right off the bat, the query limit worries me. The complete warning next to "Fetch Max" reads "Don't be greedy - your search might time out and you won't get anything".

Phbbt. Whatever. Let's kick it up to 50 and see what happens. I'm going to search for articles about... Hmmm. How about the "reanimation of dead tissue"?

Wizard. Let's see what we got. We have full article titles, authors' names, PMID numbers, full cite, and links to the abstracts, article links, and a couple of other options. "Send to a friend" lets me send the information directly to anyone in of the folks I have in my trusty "Friends" box. "Add to MyLibrary" puts the information into a PubFace specific database, a kind of bookmarking within your FaceBook page.

Next, let's try PubMed Search.

Looks very official like. No query limit, though. I'll try the same search I did previously.

Looks like the same situation as PubFace, though with less information in the results. Adding to Favorites works the same as MyLibrary, and the Share button will let you send the article to your "Friends" as well as your entire friends list, an email address, or directly to your profile. That's a tad more functionality than PubFace offers.

Not bad. If I were running a page for Becker, were a reference librarian with a bunch of students or faculty linked up to my profile, or even just more of a power user of the thing, being able to shoot an article to them directly from Facebook would be kinda handy. The "Add" function serves the same kind of purpose as Del.icio.us, but, while not particular cup of tea, it's still a great tool for the person who lives on the service.

That's probably what taints the applications for me. It's made for a very specific type of user. While both would probably be good tools for study groups or even class groups put together on the Facebook service, as far as general library use is concerned, I'm not sure this fits. Maybe if we had a specific librarian that ran all of our Web 2.0 stuff? I don't know...

Either way, the tools are out there to be played with. Maybe someone with a little less bile and venom for Facebook can think of better ways to use the applications.

(found via David Rothman)

Jason and The File Conversion Caper

Every once in a while, I get a patron who, eyes wild, hands shaking, and more than likely has a vein throbbing in their forehead, tells me that he or she is trying to print a document but "it won't open on your computers and I need to have this for the presentation I'm giving in ten minutes and if you don't help me my brain may, in fact, boil and cause a cranial explosion that will probably stain that wonderful Superman hoodie you are wearing".

Or something like that, anyway. So, what's going on here? Why can't the patron print?

Long story short, the pesky little culprit is a file type known as ".docx", which is what the new version of MSWord, Microsoft Word 2007, saves documents as by default. Becker does not yet have Word 2007 on its general use computers, making it impossible to open and print in our library. In a world without Web 2.0, our patrons would be in quite the pickle and we might have to send them to a local copy place. How can Web 2.0 keep a patron's brain meats off my Kryptonian clothing and help us help our patrons? I'm glad you asked...

Enter Zamzar, an online file conversion site and perfect for this kind of emergency. Zamzar enables users to convert files types to other file types on the go right there on its front page and WITHOUT making you sign up if you don't want to.

(Warning: A few pop-ups are going to open if you're not using a pop blocker or Mozilla Firefox. I just sayin'.)
I don't know why they have lizards on their front page, but they're really kinda awesome.

Anyway, Zamzar is very simple to use and guide the patron through.

First, tell Zamzar which file you want to upload and convert. If the patron has his document on a flash or thumb drive, offer to plug it into the computer behind the and have them show you which file they want to print. Hit the "Browse" button, find and choose that file in the window that opens, and then click "Open". You'll see the file location in the little bar underneath Step 1.

Next, you'll choose the type of file you want to convert the document to. This list of types is pretty long when you click on the menu, but the one that you want is "PDF". This will change the file to something easily opened by and printed from our computers.

The third step requires you enter an email address. If you're helping a patron through the steps, ask the patron to enter it now or use your own Wash U email. I've used the service enough times to be confident they won't send you any spam.

Finally, hit the "Convert" button under Step 4. Depending on the amount of traffic come though the site, the file should be sent to the email address provided in a few minutes. The patron can then save the file to his drive or print it directly from there.

Problem solved. Woot.

Zamzar also offers other services, such as file management and storage and downloadable tools for sending file directly from your desktop, for those interested in looking into them. As it is, though, Zamzar is a helpful tool to have in your toolbox should the need arise.

Edit: ZohoWriter (which we'll learn about later in our exploration of the 23 Things), has announced compatability with the .docx file type, as well as some other nifty features. I'm testing it out and will probably add thoughts when we get around to that week in the schedule.

Jason and The Toolbars of Terror

This really doesn't have much to do with Learning 2.0, but seeing as how there are quite a few Circulation people (Go, Circ, Go!) who are participating, I thought I might throw this up for my brothers and sisters of the Sacred Book Cart.

Since the merging of Circ and Reference under the banner "Information Services", I find myself doing a lot of new searches during my desk shift days. Lucky for me, I was used to many of these requests due to my stellar training by Angie and The Night Staff (which is a band name, if I've ever heard one) when I first started here at Becker. As I continue to grow as a Circulation Asssistant, as well as a member of the library staff in general, I am constantly looking for new ways to help my patrons faster and more efficiently with the same amount of accuracy. Here are a few things I've picked up.

I'm a big proponent of the Firefox Web Browser. I'm sure you've fooled with it a little, as it's installed on all the machines now. It may not be the stalwart work horse or the fastest and sleekest out there, but for my needs at the Information Services Desk, it's perfect. For instance, let's look at the Bookmarks Toolbar.

The Bookmarks Toolbar is the little bit of browser real estate just underneath the Location Bar, or the bar you type your web addresses into. You can fill it with anything you'd like for quick access to your favorite sites, or just sites you go to a lot. Here's what mine looks like.

(Just a note. This is what my Firefox looks like when I log in with my network login and password. You may want to clear any changes you make to ANY browser under the General Login with your co-workers, as they'll have to use the machine at some point after you.)

My first five slots are solely for Becker use. First up, we have a link to the BACS login page, the portal to the most used site of my day. Next, the link to the front page of our fair library. This is so that I have quick access to not only general information about Becker, but to the Quick Links Bar.

The next three are specific links to the Journals, the Books and Audiovisuals, and the Databases search pages. Naturally, if I'm instructing a patron on how to use the website, I won't use these. If I'm dealing with a phone call or a patron who just needs some quick information, I have the ability to go directly to the search page I need with no typing or extra clicking. Just one click gets me to the page I need.

Another great feature of Firefox is the customizable Search Bar located at the top right corner of the browser. Mozilla, the company that offers Firefox, offers hundreds of search engine plug-ins for websites ranging from Google and Definr to geek-fu sites like GameFAQs. A handful of websites we use here at Becker can be accessed through the search bar. Let's have a look at mine.

You'll notice right there near the top is PubMed, the search tool I think we all use a fair amount of the time as far as Circ goes. It works exactly like the search bar on the home page of PubMed works, too, which is pretty gee golly fancy, if you ask me. MedLine Plus, the Cochrane Library, UpToDate, even the dreaded Google Scholar (which has helped me out plenty when all else has failed) are also available, should you be so inclined.

The search extensions are easy to install. You can click the links above to get to their specific page, or go to http://mycroft.mozdev.org and search for the plug-in you want to find. Click on the title of the plug-in you want, tell Firefox you really and truly do want to install it, then test it out.

So, there you go. Of course, your mileage is gonna vary on how much you'll want to use this stuff, if you want to use it at all. And if you don't, that's totally cool. There's nothing wrong with doing it the way we've always done it. These are just a few little things you may find useful out there on the front lines of library service.

Jason and The Beauty of Music

So, here we are, new adventurers trudging through the realm of Web 2.0. How's it going for everyone? Are you finding it simple? Frustrating? Are you openly embracing these new web-based technologies, or are you not quite seeing what all the fuss is about?

One of the cool things about Web 2.0 is the way you can customize it into your Internet life. You can blog, sure, but you can also catalog your books, organize and store your photos, and watch a little pirated tv user-created content all online. While work applications must more specific, part of Learning Web 2.0 and the Habits of Lifetime Learning is to play and explore these new technologies. Playing with something that may be outside the scope of, say, library use may help you warm to some of its other benefits.

For example, a Web 2.0 application I like to use just in everyday use is Pandora, a music player that exists right in your browser. It is both awesome and rad at the same time.

Pandora allows you to listen to your own internet radio station with content you pick out, by asking you what you want to hear. All you need is your web browser and some speakers or headphones plugged in to your computer. How about an example?

First, I set up an account with Pandora. Once I've done that (remembering to tell it I don't want the monthly newsletter and assuring it I want the FREE version), Pandora asks me what I'd like to listen to. I'm a huge jazz fan, so I'm going to tell it I wanna listen to John Coltrane.


I hit enter and Blammo! It's playing John Coltrane. Above the artist is my volume slider, a play/pause button, and a skip button. It even names the station to reflect who I'm building the playlist around. Nice.

Next, it's going to play some music that has the same qualities as Coltrane's music. In this case, it's playing some Vincent Herring.

It's good stuff. Maybe I REALLY like it and want to hear similar music, or maybe I never want to hear it again. Pandora lets me decide. I simply point at the box of the song that is playing, and a little thumbs up/thumbs down box pops up.

Giving a song the old "Siskel and Ebert", or just letting the music play without comment, allows me to configure the station to my taste so that I can enjoy more of the music I like and with a minimal amount of the music I don't.

But, hey, I like more than just John Coltrane. And maybe I want to set up a station that's more Classical or Rock oriented. The sidebar on the left hand side of the player lets me add music to the station, rename it, and start other stations with just a click. And there are a lot of other features you can explore with Pandora, if you give it some time and patience.

One thing to remember: You must keep the window or tab you open Pandora in open to keep enjoying the service. If it closes, you'll have to log back in by going back to the web site. Pandora will let you open up a pop-up player to set in the background on your desktop, too, so that you don't have to look at it all the time while trying to get work done.

Pandora's a great little tool for enhancing your internet experience, all courtesy of Web 2.0. If you give it a shot, let me know in the comments. Hopefully, the overview isn't too confusing.

Jason and the Evils of The Technorati

Reasons Technorati makes me want to hit things with cabbage:

1. The site is always slow. ALWAYS. This is because the servers on which it sits are actually just giant wooden abacuses moved about by sloths on Ambien.
2. The interface is confusing at times. Mainly, all the time.
3. Simple search: "playwriting". Received this message 8 times over the course of a day:And that's just gee golly frustrating.
   
4. Just because the blog you've found is popular in Technorati, it doesn't mean its an authority on anything. When it finally did give me a listing for playwriting, the blogs I reviewed were so poorly written I literally thought of opening one of the pepper packets in my desk drawer and pouring the pepper into my very own eyes in hopes that A) the seering pain would make me forget what I had just seen, and B) I might go blind and, thus, never have such things pass mine eyes again.

Now, let me just say that your mileage may vary. Technorati may open up for you like a freshly bloomed flower from which you might collect the pollen of wonderful knowledge. And that would be awesome. Totally. And if you happen to get all connected with it, you can even link to this here blog with the button in the sidebar.

My experience, however, can be summed up in the tags.

Jason and the Quest For Learning 2.0

Alrighty. First post. What is it the kids say nowadays? "Woot"? Indeed.

On to the exercise from Thing #3, in which I will cheat by Copy and Pasting my entry in the comments section of Thing #1:

I personally view the list as a kind of hill with Habit #4, the most difficult one for me (especially when swamped with deadlines and projects), as the top. Once I’m past that point, it’s pretty much smooth sailing from there. Habits #5-#7 1/2 are the most fun for me.

I'll be honest, I'm a little flummoxed by everyone's issue about Habit #7 1/2. Is playing really that hard when it comes to Lifelong Learning? If we can't find some kind of fun in what we are learning about, or playful applications for that learning, what's the point?

I dunno. Maybe I'm reading into the comments wrong. It's Friday after all and time for me to go home, so I'm a little distracted. Have a good weekend, everyone.

Woot!