Four Last Things

The Four Last Things, in Christian eschatology, are Death and Judgement, Heaven and Hell.

Death: well, I seem to have died! At least, my participation in the 23 Things programme has. I think this was partly due to a feature of the programme itself, which was that it was designed to provide a 'taster' of Web 2.0 technologies -- it was a lot of things to dip your toes in, but in order to get any real feel for some of them you had to at least paddle around a bit and get your feet wet. And -- I think I'd better abandon my watery metaphor here -- as with almost any unfamiliar technology it took quite a bit of exploration to get a feeling for what it was trying to do and how it was trying to do it, even if once you'd got that feeling it seemed fairly obvious and intuitive. For some things, you seemed to be required to get your feet too wet -- I'm sure for some things we could have registered their existence and features without setting up our own accounts (there seemed to be many cries of "Oh no -- not another login to remember!" from participants). And for some things we were required to wet our feet with water we'd already wetted them with in other pools, if you see what I mean -- I'm thinking particularly of editing photos with picnik, as tools like altering contrast and colour balance are things you will find in almost any photo-editing programme and, while it's interesting to know that there are online utilities you can use to edit photos any time, any where, it can be quite time-consuming actually tinkering with them (I'll increase this, and decrease that, and perhaps that's a bit too far -- undo it and have another go, and what happens if I click on this ...).

Heaven: well, I wouldn't go so far as to call it heaven, but I did have fun trying to think up titles for posts which featured the word Thing in a naturally-occurring context, and composing posts in my head as I walked home, mulling over what I might write. That was one of the reasons I didn't finish the programme -- I'm not the sort of person whose thoughts flow straight out from conception onto the page or screen (without passing through the brain on the way, it seems in some cases); anything I write has been carefully crafted, vigorously polished and then buffed up, in an attempt to convey accurately, succinctly and cogently what is in my head (which isn't always easy because I seem to think in concepts rather than words, and I can't always find the right words to put across the concept with precision).

Hell: setting up yet another username and password (see other 23Thingers, passim). Finding I'd let myself in for yet more of those bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed automated emails turning up in my inbox (Where You Can Go Next With Linked-In! -- I'm not sure I want to go anywhere with it; Jane Smith Is Following You On Twitter! -- Who? And why? I feel a bit like I'm being stalked!). Trawling through my fellow participants' blogs, trying to work out who was managing to keep up with things (or Things) and who had something interesting to say about it. Trawling through my own blog looking to see if anyone had left any comments (I may have missed something somewhere, but surely there ought to be some way of alerting a blogger to the fact thta someone has something to say about their blog. Like more of those annoying automated emails!).

Judgement: I try to be judicious rather than judgemental. I often felt, with Things to which my initial reaction was negative, that if I had time to explore them more thoroughly I'd understand how to make good use of them. Perhaps some aspects of the programme could have been more targetted -- when I complained that playing around with photostreams on flickr was all very well but what use was it to a library, Jane pointed out ways in which some libraries were already using flickr; it might have been better to introduce participants to that before getting them to contribute their own photos. Some Things gave me a distinct feeling of "old-hat" -- "Explore Wikipedia!"; I've been exploring it for years, and I know it's a useful quick first-port-of-call, but not necessarily to be relied on. And some aspects of the programme seemed a little superficial, done just for the sake of doing them -- I didn't complete the Thing involving editing Wikipedia because I didn't have time to go through all the entries on subjects which I knew a fair bit about in order to find one to which I thought I could make a useful contribution rather than just changing it for the sake of changing something. What I have been wishing for years is that there was an Oxford libraries version of Wikipedia, in which I could find things like the escape codes to use for navigating round Geac Advance, and to which we could all contribute our own "tips and tricks". Thanks to the programme, I should be able to set one up myself! (but phrases involving "can" and "worms" keep springing to mind!) Maybe someone already has ... And perhaps a 23 Things wiki would have been useful, as a central point to which we could have contributed comments for all the other participants to see.

Not such a bad Thing (in some ways)

Hitherto, I have been deeply sceptical about Twitter. The very name put me off -- it sounded far too much like a combination of "twit" and "witter", and what I had heard inclined me to think it consisted of self-obsessed individuals chronicling the minutiae of their everyday lives ("verbal diarrhoea", as someone described it), and celebrity-obsessed fans following their idol's every move. However, I don't like to allow prejudices to substitute for trying things out and making an informed judgement, so I signed up for it. Yet another thing requiring a password -- it's bad practice to keep re-using the same one, so I'd better think up a new one. Whatever it was, it was insufficiently memorable, as I've now (a week later) forgotten it, and had to reset it! At least resetting it is a fairly simple procedure, and doesn't require remembering one's grandmother's cat's maiden name or suchlike. I signed up to follow the British Library, and the Bodleian. Very unenterprising, but this exercise is supposed to be at least tangentially work-related! The list of tweets from the BL showed that tweeting has one thing greatly in its favour, and that is that it imposes brevity! It also demonstrates well the sort of things a library could usefully employ Twitter for -- sending out announcements about events and exhibitions, information about opening hours, alerts for relevant online discussions, etc. However, it's no good tweeting at people if they're not tuned in to your tweets, so I did a little exercise, and picked a small, random sample of Somervillians to look up and see if they had Twitter accounts. Then I redid my sample, picking those with unusual names! I found very few of them. So, I will repeat something I've already said:-- As a college library, our clientele is in the nature of a closed community. I don't know if all the students, and members of the SCR, have Twitter accounts, or Facebook accounts, but I do know they all have email accounts (which the students are required, by the rules of the college, to check regularly), and various maillists have been set up, so I can send out emails to everybody, or to all undergraduates, or all graduates, or all freshers. That seems to me the most effective method of communication.

Not the most useful of Things, perhaps

I signed up for LinkedIn. It offered to connect me with half a dozen people in Somerville who were already registered. All of whom I'm likely to bump into at lunch.

I can see LinkedIn may make you feel better if you're a lonely little cog in a huge organization, or be useful if you're a career-oriented job-seeker wanting to Get On in your profession. (Librarianship isn't a career, it's a sort of love-affair. As I said to the landlady who asked me, "Why don't you get a proper job?") A directory of recommended service providers could be useful -- but I would start by sending an email off to the Committee of College Librarians maillist saying "Can anyone recommend ...?", especially if I was looking for something local. And it may be that it's only just getting going and will expand, but the range of services listed seems very limited -- I can't see "book suppliers" or anything similar.

Like so many of these web-based networks, it seems too all-encompassingly globalized and diffuse to be of much genuine benefit. Perhaps Web 3.0 will be where all this information-sharing goes intranet rather than internet and gets more focussed -- now, wouldn't it be useful if Oxford librarians had a website for sharing things like tips and tricks for searching OLIS, where to find a good bookbinder or lighting supplier, how to decline an unwanted donation diplomatically, who to contact about cataloguing a book in Kadazan, etc. etc.?

Getting Things a little out of order

I haven't quite got as far as completing Thing 11 (podcasts) yet. I did a bit of investigation of what might be available -- I'm a great fan of BBC Radio 7, but they seem to have very little available as podcasts, I think because they have their iplayer "listen again" facility, so I tried Radio 4 instead and saw The Archers is available. I'd no doubt get some very strange looks if I sat in the middle of Somerville library with "Barwick Green" tinkling cheerfully out! I haven't dared subscribe, in case I get hooked! So I'll explore a bit further at home (if I can get a decent signal, as I have a mobile broadband connection which periodically goes dead on me).

For Thing 12, YouTube, see below. I'd avoided YouTube in the past, having a suspicion that it would be like watching a combination of endless episodes of You've Been Framed with other people's holiday videos. No doubt there's a lot of that sort of thing there, but also some very good things such as Simon's Cat, who reminds me very much of one of my own dear furry pest- er, friends. However, a viewing of "Simon's cat -- Hot spot" was followed by "suggested viewing" including something contributed by "FuckinKillBeasty Boys" which ended with the unfortunate cat being nuked -- beware video nasties! Also beware imitations, of which Simon's Cat has a fair selection, of varying merit -- it all reminds me rather of fanfic (no, you don't want to hear all about my foray into Star Trek Voyager fanfic/slash. It was a very long time ago ...).

Maybe we should put our library induction on YouTube -- it would save us all a lot of breath at the start of Michaelmas Term! But I fear the advantages would be outweighed by the cringing embarassment of watching ourselves!!

One little gripe. (Only one? Little? And here's me trying to build up a reputation as a balloon-pricking old curmudgeon!) I can read a lot faster than anyone can talk. So, on the whole, I think text is a more efficient way of disseminating information.

On to the next Thing -- Facebook. "You can include your contact information, opening hours, links to SOLO and other sites ..." says the official 23 Things blog. Yes, but -- isn't that all available on your library's website? Is Facebook where readers are looking for that sort of information? Is it efficient to duplicate the information? And it's yet another set of information which you have to remember to update if anything changes. (Is my curmudgeonly reputation secure yet? I must go and look at a few of these pages before sounding off any further!)

I can't keep up with Things!

The posts on the official 23 Things blog, and the list of things one is supposed to look at/try out/subscribe to, seem to be lengthening exponentially. I may catch up eventually!

Things get a bit complicated (but fun!)

Now, YouTube is FUN! But has caused me one or two problems ...

My usual post in the library is sitting behind the reception desk in the middle of the library entrance hall. I fear readers with enquiries would find it offputting if I wore headphones, but I can hardly sit there with Michael Flanders and Donald Swann singing "The English, the English, the English are best -- I wouldn't give twopence for all of the rest!" blasting out from my laptop, even if I play it very, very quietly. (In case anyone should feel concern at my choice of viewing matter, the "Song of Patriotic Prejudice" is of course ironic -- and very funny.) But the computer in the office doesn't have a sound-card. Solution: take the laptop into the office. Complications: first of all, find enough clear desk-space to put the laptop on which is within reach of the ethernet socket; then find a spare ethernet cable -- only one I can find has lost its clips, so watch it doesn't come loose from the socket at either end -- and unplug the desktop's ethernet cable (don't forget to plug it back in, or the next person using the desktop will be completely stymied) ...

All successfully set up, and here are Messrs Flanders and Swann in full colour!

So much stuff on here! I did a search for "Oxford University" -- the results seem to be heavily biased to MBA students! I did a search for Hinksey, to see if there were clips featuring the Oxfordshire villages of that name -- the results were a train-spotter's delight! It looks like some people put up clips from their favourite movies -- has anyone mentioned the dread word Copyright? At home, I have a stack of books I've never read, and a pile of DVDs I've never watched -- I fear I'm going to be adding a long list of YouTube clips I've never explored!

New Things for an old dog

I fear this blog has had an attack of Fifth Week Sag (that mid-term wilting feeling, when it seems that term has been going on far too long but the end is nowhere near being in sight yet). I spent last week jotting random notes of my thoughts about deli.cio.us, but never got my head round putting them together into a coherent post. It's now well into Sixth Week, so, lest I should be disappointing my legions of adoring fans ;), here are some rambling rantings:

I think I have been around computers too long. Several of these Web 2.0 things are solutions to problems to which I worked out my own solutions years ago. I'm used to my own solutions; they work for me -- I don't personally find any advantage in the Web 2.0 solution. Many, many years ago, when the internet was in its infancy, I solved the problem of my bookmarks not being accessible from any computer I happened to be using by writing a webpage of links to all the things I used most often, and links to other pages where I collected links I used less often. Over the years, as what I found useful disappeared, changed, or was added to, I updated the pages. They all sit in my University webspace, and all I need in order to be able to alter them is an ftp programme, a basic text editor like Notepad, and to remember a few basic HTML tags. Last summer, having come across this "Web 2.0" expression and investigated what it was all about, I thought I'd try bookmarking things on delicious instead. But I didn't get very far with it. For a start, I couldn't download the "bookmarklet" -- probably due to restrictions put on my computer by the College's IT department, who seem to have very definite ideas about what constitutes work and might well have jibbed at being asked to set me up with something called a "social bookmarking service" -- so solved the problem of adding a bookmark quickly to delicious by -- adding the delicious "Save a new bookmark" page to my IE Favorites! One of the things I often save links to is second-hand bookshops and search sites -- but couldn't remember whether I'd tagged them "second-hand" or "2nd-hand", "booksearch" or "search" (yes, I know there's an "autocomplete" function, which will fill in a previously-used tag for you, but you have to remember how your tag started). I also tried investigating what other people were tagging which might be useful for antiquarian cataloguing, so I tried "rare books", "antiquarian books", "early printed books" -- maybe I'm too much of a librarian, but one thing that bugs me about "tags" is the lack of authority control! Such links as I found were sometimes to webpages which no longer existed, and often to things I knew already or didn't find very useful. Google is so brilliant at finding things that I'd rather type search terms in there than try to guess what tags other people might have assigned to things -- and using Google I can quite often find things again even if I haven't bookmarked them. If I find something I want to share with friends or colleagues, I just email them a link. And tags tend to be very general -- you may end up with too many things tagged the same to be useful.

There is also the problem which applies to the World Wide Web in general -- the reliability of the data. How do I know that someone who has tagged this webpage as A Good Thing has the expertise to tell whether it is A Good Thing or not? This is where I can see having a library contributing to delicious could be useful -- one would hope library staff would be as careful in their choice of bookmarks as they are in their choice of books (although you don't have to pay out money for the former!). But a lot of libraries already have a "Useful links" page on their websites. Having your own page of links means that you can control how it looks, organize them into groups and rank them hierarchically. It may be easier to bookmark something on delicious than to add it to a webpage, but it may also mean one is less discriminating!

These are only preliminary reactions to delicious. Looking at what needs to be done for Thing 10, and at other people's experience of delicious, I'm sure there are a lot of benefits to it, and if I had plenty of time to play around with it and explore I'd find them. But I don't at present. So I think I'd better move on to someThing else.