The Winners' Circle

I checked out the Web 2.0 Award winners for the categories of Books, Games and Collaborative Writing and Word Processing. Nothing new in Books, but I got a huge kick out of Guess the Google (an image guessing game). The game presents a mashup of images, all purportedly retrieved as a result of entering a shared search word; the game objective is to guess the one-word search term that links all the tiny images. Mildly addictive, the game increases mental flexibility with its reverse search strategy. That's the rationale I offered as I tapped the keys repeatedly for one more round of intellectual calisthenics.

I was pleased to see the online word processors accorded recognition; these are a boon for library customers using public internet computers. They really deserve their own module in our 2.0 exercise, and many other Learning 2.0 programs accord them their due. Familiarity with tools like Zoho, Thinkfree and Google Docs should be required competency for library staffers, especially where access to proprietary productivity software (e.g. Microsoft Office) is limited and in high demand. A valuable exercise would be to challenge staff to create a blog post using one of the free web-based word processors. The investment in boosting staff awareness of these tools would pay off smartly in enhanced customer service and public appreciation.

Tinkering with Technorati

It was interesting to search blog posts and add tags to be sifted by Technorati. It was exciting to see my own blog miniaturized on the Technorati search page. I checked a few other blogs and noted the additional blogs that link to them. The exercise presented a neat visual network.

Now We're Talking!

Couldn't get enough of the folksonomy readings; tagging is cool! Building an intellectual community of expertise and interest is more genuine and exhilarating than approximating a network of emotional affinity. Del.icio.us is a handy tool, especially for nomadic library staff. A well compiled set of online bookmarks can function like a portable information kiosk. Bookmarking sites can help demonstrate the library's traditional strength--navigating and creating pathways through formidable stores of information--enacted on a dynamic Web 2.0 stage. Bookmarking sites can play to the customer's marketing soft spot; we're all tempted by the customized product--the responsive blend that validates our interests and satisfies our curiosity

The Tools of Engagement

Language has always fascinated me. Most times, I'm honored to be held in the thrall of words, but on occasion, I've been backhanded by bit of linguistic irony...and it smarts. The language of social networking repeatedly stings me. I wince when I hear "myspace" and I shudder to hear folk proclaiming the roll of "friends" collected on their page. I despair when I imagine a generation or two (or more) for whom the terminology of social networking holds no satirical bite.

The language purist in me roils at the sloppy labelling; we've no lack of appropriate words to describe online connections and connectors. In virtual as in physical realms, we encounter colleagues, acquaintances, onlookers, as well as friends and assorted loved ones. Why lump sundry gradations of social encounter together, and strain a word's utility with imprecision? Friendship, for me, has a degree of exclusivity, founded on a particular, intense, and mutually perceived symbiosis.

It's all about engagement, an intimate process, whether writ large or small. Engagement happens when we experience that moment of revealed symbiosis. Here is a writer who has penned what I have felt. Here is a painter who creates what I have seen. Here is a partner who acts on what I believe. Here is a librarian who hears what I seek, who finds what I need. The task of engagement is far more basic than deciding whether to create a library MySpace account. The challenge for libraries lies in learning to engage the public. The prudent library (and librarian) perfects the capacity and skill to engage the on-hand customer in genuine interchange, before casting about for the illusive virtual passerby.

Being There - MySpace Paradox

There is a deft bit of industry two-step called for in combining library service and marketing. Not surprisingly, the proficient and self-assured perform the choreography best. MySpace may be utilized by teens as a playground for practicing representation and tweaking response, but it is no place for faint or fumbling institutional posers. Libraries are not adolescents, and ought not don the trendy (but ill-fitting) garb of those whose legitimate developmental task it is to pose and parry.

It's unfortunate that "youth space" has gone virtual. In Platonic terms, adolescence is a time to exit the cave, to glimpse alone and with one's peers the awesome world without. It's a time to try to differentiate shadowed from genuine reality. Libraries have no place "fronting" in the MySpace developmental playground, but might stake a signpost to point the way toward genuine, non-mediated life experience. A link to the teen section of the library web page, which in turn provides information about events and volunteer opportunities, would suffice.

The amassing of "friends" should be eschewed; such social misrepresentation is a developmental disservice to young people. Libraries with vital, committed teen departments are far better served (and far better servants) in promoting face-to-face encounters and supporting non-virtual youth spaces. Let the teens buzz in their branded Murdochian cave, if they must, but let's help them transcend their shadow play, and discover and appreciate the tangible, transformative world of interaction with fully fleshed people and ideas.

IM...Red Carpet Detour from the Socio-Digital Divide

There is an aspect of the feverish procession to IM that troubles me. Were it accompanied by commensurate outreach to disadvantaged users, it might be more laudable. Where it coexists with policies that needlessly constrain those who lack access to basic technology, it signals a woeful retreat from our fundamental institutional charge to decry social inequity and ameliorate its effects. Shame on libraries that fawn on the privileged and exacerbate the digital divide!

Resources allocated to court the digitally privileged are more responsibly spent in empowering the digitally impoverished. Energy expended to lure the immature into ever more superficial exchange is more productively (and honorably) spent in dismantling the obstacles (some imposed by libraries themselves) that thwart engagement on the part of masses that are already seeking us out, and that, unlike the IM-intoxicated, lack viable alternatives.
instant messaging
social responsibility
library 2.0

We Will, We Will WIKI...

Wikispaces had a pleasing interface, more attractive than PBwiki. Posting was relatively easy and contributing was satisfying. It is a site I would explore further.

The cumulative effect of additional postings to the Wikispaces site could be the cultivation of a useful resource, especially if postings are annotated with RA appeal language

Wiki Wonderland

Wiki Wiki Wiki...as much fun to say as they are to browse! Wikis are cool, and when used for appropriate projects, they're an invigorating, interactive paradise. They accommodate anonymity and encourage dialogue and discovery. I think they work well for subject guides, but are especially powerful showcases for reader advisory and conference experiences.

The Princeton BookLovers wiki fed a near-universal curiosity--the desire to peek into another reader's bookbag. Viewing the wiki is like walking up and down the checkout line, querying each customer "Hmm...why did you choose that one?" Who hasn't wanted to do that? Or on the flip side, who hasn't encountered the customer who's bursting to tell someone about the book they just returned?

Call it CHAT

Here's an analogy: IM is to quality reference as Koolaid is to fruit punch. Quality reference transactions depend upon resources and engagement. IM communication is often on-the-fly and tangential to other activity. A multitasking customer is not a suitable actor for the level of engagement required for quality reference service. Similarly, the absence of broadly recognized, accessible in-place resources and practiced scenarios diminishes the likelihood of quality instant- message-based reference service.

IM Nation under a Ruse

Not surprising that IM use follows generational lines, according to the Pew Report, with Trailing Baby Boomers among those who use IM least. Perhaps the reason has something to do with the innate peculiarity of IM communication. Highly exposed, yet oddly disembodied, it can be urgent, intimate, formulaic, disingenuous in configurations not attainable by traditional communication.

Reliance on IM for anything more than the most cursory communication poses challenges for libraries. It may be handy and well appreciated for navigational guidance and light information regarding programs and services, but for interaction with customers regarding reference questions, there are core issues of privacy to consider. Online there is always the prospect of third party presence to information transactions, and policies of chat record deletion lose efficacy.

Libraries soliciting IM interaction with the public should do so with gravity, caution and clearly worded caveats in order to avoid misleading those driven more strongly by curiosity than circumspection.

Deep Feeds

I'll play a bit more with feed search tools. I'm curious to see if they will help dig deeper into the invisible web. I did locate some interesting discussions of Web 2.0 privacy implications.

Checking back in after playing some more. Feedster remains inaccessible. I'm not fond of the user interface for Topix.net or Syndic8.com. I'm especially not fond of the location-tailored content on Topix; it reminds me (annoyingly) of the fact that I'm feeding it even before it's delivered anything to me. Technorati is most appealing, but it, too, would be a supplement rather than first line of attack for information searches.

Ravenous for RSS

It's enticing to be able to view a smorgasbord of tailored info-bits---a feast culled and arrayed just for me. Using RSS feeds is arguably efficient, but it may not be fully experiential. There is something to be said for collecting information and forming impressions in context, rather than relying on a mechanistic zeroing in on content. It matters, for example, whether a story is placed on page 1 or buried within the middle of a publication. It matters what other stories surround the item on a given page. It matters what a blog looks like. All these browsable aspects of info gathering have import, and take time.

RSS is a tool, but not a replacement for engaging with the source.

Caveat Blogger - Permalink Mishap

First, a disclaimer: blog entry dates to the contrary, I did not create this blog in one day!
It was originally created using a different blog hosting site, but the permalinks did not pan out. It was then migrated (read: cut and pasted) to the familiar Blogger site.

Just shows that flexibility has its downside, and avoiding the crowd can exact a toll. I do miss my Wordpress scenic header.

: )

Librarians in 2.0 - Selling the Soap??

We're asked to consider the role of libraries (and librarians) vis a vis the privacy concerns raised by many Web 2.0 products. While we may each have personal curiosities, comfort levels and hot buttons that govern our individual participation, our trademark professional values demand that we try to be alert to some of the mind-numbing effects produced by the euphoria of engagement in that segment of Web 2.0 that is so craftily dubbed social networking.

To begin, we can watch the language, and its co-opted connotations. Friends, buddies--warm fuzzy terms indeed. But do these really share the same meanings online and face-to-face? We can help our customers begin to practice a healthy degree of discrimination and discernment. We can scrutinize the competing notions of trust: radical and rendered full blown at the outset, or traditional and accrued incrementally based on evolving experience.

To continue, we can carefully consider our mission. Is it to serve the masses or the few? Is it to engage the youthful cybernauts, that privileged demographic charging headlong toward the frontiers of online interaction with full packs of expensive electronic gear? Are we trying to tweak their course, or join it? One option presumes we will be heeded; the other that we will be funded.

We might ask whether (or to what extent) Web 2.0 is a generational phenomenon, a blazing comet that will light, but leave the our sky. How many flags do we want to plant under its (perhaps transitory) aura? Whom are we not seeing when our noses are pointed toward 2.0? What will we all do when the light dims?

Privacy in 2.0--Imperiled or Reformatted?

Alas, this (http://www.jasoneiseman.com/blog/?p=210 ) is as close I could get to Aaron's "privacy is not an option" post on walkingpaper, and as I'm not particularly fond of wrestling repeatedly with my browser Task manager, it will have to suffice.

The notion of privacy concession as a coin of the Web 2.0 realm troubles me. The blithe assertion that Web 2.0 users must pay (by relinquishing some privacy) in order to "play" in the world of social sites chills me. I want to believe that participation need not be orchestrated by the basest commercial needs of the site provider/sponsors.

We've seen this crusade before, in textile towns, mining communities, chemical plant environs. Tap into the bounty, live better...just leave a few inalienable rights at the door. After all, they don't spend well at the local Wiggly Piggly.

But why backslide unnecessarily? The environmental movement has demonstrated, in some degree at least, that industry can be molded by human concerns. People, especially those who've lived deep enough to recognize the contours of power and vulnerability, need not bend unquestioningly to efforts of industry to refashion humans. A healthy alternative to the "privacy is not an option" slogan might be "mandatory privacy relinquishment is not an option." Or how about "Reformat networks, not people."

Privacy 2.0: A Paramount Concern

We're invited to consider the role and value of privacy for those who navigate within a Web 2.0 world, and especially for those who would cast libraries within that world. Whether we act as navigational guides or content providers, library staffers must grapple (perhaps even more intently than the customers we serve) with the often chimeric notion of privacy. Most of us have a rather coarse sense of privacy--we know it when we've got it, and we know it when it's gone.

To get a fuller, more useful sense of the Big P--privacy, that is--there are questions worth asking. What is it? Where is it? What is it good for? How much can I spare? How much do I need? Can I get it back if I give it up?

A strong Library 2.0 program might address the notion of privacy right from the git-go. A careful consideration of privacy deserves equal marquee space with a review of the habits of the successful mature learner. Privacy assessment is intrinsic to the process of self-directed learning within a Web 2.0 milieu.

Outreach through Blogging…Bloutreach??

It was interesting to check out the list of blogging libraries. I’m most impressed by the reader advisory blogs (like WRL’s Blogging for a Good Book http://bfgb.wordpress.com/) that regularly share solid, detailed content with a touch of eye-candy. Apppealing entries seem to bubble effortlessly from a reservoir of dedicated competence and attention to the value of reader advisory. Not to mention an apparent stockpile of good annotations!

I’m less enthused by blogs that appear to be groping their way through. Constant naked beta is not a pretty sight!

I’m also impressed by some of the library director/administrator blogs, like this one http://gathernodust.blogspot.com/ by an intrepid Arizona library manager. It’s a powerful investment in community dialogue when a key library administrator engages his staff and public in an ongoing conversation about principle, direction and development.

In many locations, I can imagine an enlightening, administrator-initiated exchange on the purpose and value of self-checkout; customers routinely question whether it is a service improvement or draconian precursor to staff cuts. At the very least, a good administrator blog might generate valuable feedback to supplement service surveys.

Switchback – My Learner Habits

We’re asked to declare which of the Habits of Successful Learners are, respectively, easiest and most challenging. I embrace them with equal ease; they are tried, true, lifelong “homies.” An alternative, more user-centered, less confessional (and equally enlightening) feedback request might be “Which of the Habits of Successful Learners are most important? Choose 2 and explain why you selected them.”

I would choose Habits #3 and #7.5 because they offset each other nicely. Where learning is an intensely serious activity that actualizes human potential, and breaks chains of individual and societal ignorance, play, with its power to energize and mellow, forms a critical ballast.

Dystopia and Discussion

Still weaving up the down staircase: blog posts are not sanctioned until Week 3. But I’m trusting the momentum of my inner learner, and blogging as the discoveries present.

2 memorable discussions this week: one office-mate confessed how strange it seemed to transmute the web-formatted instructions and resources into printouts to be perused as if they’d come from a mid-twentieth century typewriter. Why not digest the ideas in their presenting format? Another colleague joined me in a satisfying chorus of concern regarding the purported wisdom of the crowd. By what alchemy does collected opinion crystallize into veritable wisdom?

Both discussions reminded me of the Youtube clips, Web 2.0: An Intro in 5 Minutes, and What is Web 2.0? Talk about dystopian…saints Orwell and Huxley preserve us! What a chilling sleight of hand, when first we are teaching the machine with each click we register, then in a few brief minutes’ time, we are obliged to begin rethinking our privacy, our aesthetics, our ethics, our identity–in short, all that makes us human.

Hmmm, better strike that last term, for the one fast-moving show informs us that we have become identical with the machine. The other clip soberly proclaims the result of our participation in the social web; we “end users” become subsumed within the application’s data, prepped and fit to be leveraged.

2.0 Thoughts

We looked at a series of articles, entitled Web 2.0: Where will the next generation Web take libraries? My thoughts percolated over Dr. Wendy Schultz’s response, “To A Temporary Place in Time.” Schultz traces the library parallel for an economic chain of meaning, from commodity to product, to service to experience. Library 1.0 was the commodity (akin to coffee beans), while Library 4.0 will be the experience (akin to Starbucks). In between lies the buzz-crowned 2.0, a mere waystation in flux.

I like that analogy. I do believe the social experience folk are crowing over is a Platonic shadow of the experience humans crave, a virtual substitute for direct, genuine interaction. Genuine interaction tilts to a spiritual level; it is transcendent. Virtual interaction leans to a shadowy plane; it is mutative. Participants are leveraged and commodified.

A problem with Schultz’s end-state library Shangri-la: it, too, is economics-driven. It is unlikely that disadvantaged segments of society will find easy access to the luxurious thought-salons so delightfully described, especially as those hyper-refined settings will rely heavily on the largesse of private partners. Makes a good case for revisiting the Maxwell House, or whole grain Library 1.5.

My Favorite Things

Week One of our Learning 2.0 adventure featured an overview of the characteristics of lifelong learning, and the habits of successful learners. Striking for me was the primacy–in the literature– of the individual learner, and the acknowledgement that the learner will determine his goal, path and process.

Our communal exercise stumbled a bit in this regard; the initial pathways were narrow and constrained, the starting gaits (not gates) jerky and counterintuitive. I would have liked to have seen more radical trust in the efficacy of the learner, to choose wisely (whether to register or defer, bruit or conceal enrollment) and to proceed appropriately (eschewing labyrinthine launch-pads for a more logical learning sequence).

Learning 2.0 embodies interesting tensions; exploring and illuminating those tensions are valuable goals for the professional information navigator.

Hello World!

Day dawns on a new blog, and a new vista of learning. Over the coming weeks, I’ll be trekking alone and with colleagues, surveying the contours of Learning 2.0, through the prism of library service in a brave new world of virtual community and digitized humanity.