Podcasts are like radio shows that you can listen to whenever you want. There are podcasts about just about everything and I worked with them a great deal when I was studying Japanese. Since anyone with a microphone can make a podcast, there are many to choose from.
Most of the podcasts I have listened to were for practicing foreign languages. A particularly useful one was called JPod101. It was a weekly podcast that helped the listener understand a dialogue. I found it was very helpful because I had no other reliable method of listening to Japanese speech, seeing as I lived in Green Bay, Wisconsin at the time.
Another great thing about podcasts is that most of them are free. Podcasts can be quite entertaining and I listened to many over the summer when my job consisted solely of shelving books for 8 hours a day. I find it's easy to find interviews with celebrities you like. For example, I have a ton of Anthony Bourdain interviews from different podcasts.
Though I enjoy NPR, I can't think of many people my age who do. Podcasts seem to have taken the place of talk radio for my generation, and I suspect that will be the case for future generations as well.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Thing 12: Videos
So YouTube has been around for a while, and most people have found it to be entertaining if nothing else. But I think it is good to think of how libraries may use it. Just as libraries have their own website, many have their own YouTube channel. Through their channel they can promote new features of the library, post recordings of public workshops, and present answers/tutorials for frequently asked questions. It is much easier to show someone how to use a database than it is to tell them, and YouTube allows a library to do this 24 hours a day.
Here's a video I found about libraries and the future of print materials:
Joking aside, there are plenty of educational videos posted by libraries. University of Washington has a nice page which gives tours of their libraries and teaches new users the basics of using them. They are both informative and fun! Here's one:
Here's a video I found about libraries and the future of print materials:
Joking aside, there are plenty of educational videos posted by libraries. University of Washington has a nice page which gives tours of their libraries and teaches new users the basics of using them. They are both informative and fun! Here's one:
Thing 11: Photo Fun
The point of Thing 11 is to get us to explore some of the easy photo editors/generators. These are fun little tools that allow you to easily make cool signs or add some flair to a web page. Half the fun of these was simply looking at all the available options. I'm sure I have seen some of these used on Facebook and in other social contexts but they could also be useful for libraries. I can see these being particularly useful for marketing purposes. These kinds of signs/fonts grab someone's attention much better than a simple bold font MS Word page would. Take the one I made, for example:
Monday, October 3, 2011
Thing 10: Images and Photos
The website Flickr allows us to post photos and tag them for others to search for. There also seems to be a lot of groups that post pictures of a certain theme (silly cats for example).
I have a strange fascination with blacksmithing so I chose that as my search term. This brought up many pictures of old men in overalls. I wanted something a little more in line with my glorified idea of blacksmiths. Luckily you can refine your search to "interesting" photos. I don't know exactly what Flickr means by "interesting" but it helped me find what I was looking for.
http://flic.kr/p/ahxwGh
http://flic.kr/p/7yDAkY
Another interesting feature of Flickr is their privacy settings. This allows you to limit who may see your photos. Privacy on the internet is a big concern and having these options makes it easier to post photos that you may not want everybody to have access to.
I have a strange fascination with blacksmithing so I chose that as my search term. This brought up many pictures of old men in overalls. I wanted something a little more in line with my glorified idea of blacksmiths. Luckily you can refine your search to "interesting" photos. I don't know exactly what Flickr means by "interesting" but it helped me find what I was looking for.
http://flic.kr/p/ahxwGh
http://flic.kr/p/7yDAkY
Another interesting feature of Flickr is their privacy settings. This allows you to limit who may see your photos. Privacy on the internet is a big concern and having these options makes it easier to post photos that you may not want everybody to have access to.
Thing 9: Tagging
I had never seen a website like Delicious until now and I wish I had sooner. I have found it to be a great tool for exploring things I am completely unfamiliar with. Let me give you an example: I am interested in exotic foods. Now I could easily conduct a search about this through any number of sites, but the results I get are likely to be very different. This is because search engines will use some kind of "relevance algorithm" to determine which sites (that they search) are most pertinent to my search. Delicious, on the other hand, relies on user feedback to display its results.
If someone tags a site with the terms "Japanese" and "food" then it will be displayed on my results page. I can then see how popular the results were by seeing how many users "saved" that page. If a site has thousands of "saves" it may be safe to assume that it is quite relevant to those tags assigned to it.
If an expert in a certain field tags a site it is very much like receiving her advice that the site is relevant and/or useful. We cannot know for sure who did the tagging but it would be very easy for collaborating researchers to tag sites in a recognizable way, allowing them to basically communicate. For example: If two researchers were working on a project they could agree to tag all relevant websites a certain way. Then they could search that tag later and easily retrieve them.
If someone tags a site with the terms "Japanese" and "food" then it will be displayed on my results page. I can then see how popular the results were by seeing how many users "saved" that page. If a site has thousands of "saves" it may be safe to assume that it is quite relevant to those tags assigned to it.
If an expert in a certain field tags a site it is very much like receiving her advice that the site is relevant and/or useful. We cannot know for sure who did the tagging but it would be very easy for collaborating researchers to tag sites in a recognizable way, allowing them to basically communicate. For example: If two researchers were working on a project they could agree to tag all relevant websites a certain way. Then they could search that tag later and easily retrieve them.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Thing 8: Wikis
Wikis are a type of collaborative website that usually attempts to provide a certain type of information. Of course there's Wikipedia, which attempts to provide information on everything. Wikis, though, are the same in style but differ in scope. That is, if we think of Wikipedia as a general encyclopedia, then Wikis are like subject encyclopedias.
Let's take for example the Wikipedia article on The Lord of the Rings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_rings) and the Lord of the Rings wiki (http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page). We can see that Wikipedia offers a fairly long article with tons of links to other pages on characters, locations, etc. However the information is organized in a way that caters to a user looking for broad information about Lord of the Rings. The wiki on the other hand has almost 4000 pages just about Lord of the Rings. When you go to the homepage you can see Youtube videos, images, and news along with a more encyclopedic article. There is simply much more depth in the wiki than would be appropriate in Wikipedia.
Just like Wikipedia one must exercise caution when referencing wikis. Perhaps more careful as they can be edited by anyone and are less likely to be checked for accuracy. One of the key features of wikis is the ease with which one can edit them. One does not need to know HTML to edit a wiki and its very easy to link from one article to another.
Let's take for example the Wikipedia article on The Lord of the Rings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_rings) and the Lord of the Rings wiki (http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page). We can see that Wikipedia offers a fairly long article with tons of links to other pages on characters, locations, etc. However the information is organized in a way that caters to a user looking for broad information about Lord of the Rings. The wiki on the other hand has almost 4000 pages just about Lord of the Rings. When you go to the homepage you can see Youtube videos, images, and news along with a more encyclopedic article. There is simply much more depth in the wiki than would be appropriate in Wikipedia.
Just like Wikipedia one must exercise caution when referencing wikis. Perhaps more careful as they can be edited by anyone and are less likely to be checked for accuracy. One of the key features of wikis is the ease with which one can edit them. One does not need to know HTML to edit a wiki and its very easy to link from one article to another.
Thing 7: Social Networking
Ok. I'm 24 years old. That means I was in high school when all these popular (especially Myspace and Facebook) social network sites appeared. Like most highschoolers my social life depended on them.
That being said, I've never looked closely at Facebook and considered why someone might choose to use it (besides the fact that EVERYBODY else does). It's worth noting that sites like Myspace allow much greater customization of one's homepage. It might even have been too customizable. The nice thing about Facebook is that you put in your information and your page comes out nice and neat.
Another appealing thing about Facebook is its fairly sophisticated privacy tools. If one knows how, it is easy to limit how much of one's profile is available to different people. That means when some old classmate from 10 years ago asks to be your friend, you don't have to worry that you're just giving away all your contact info to some guy who just wants you to join some goofy pyramid scam. Instead, you can create limited profiles and share only the info that you want to share. The problem with this (and it's a big one) is Facebook constantly updates and changes these privacy settings and learning the ins and outs of them can be both time consuming and quite tricky.
Most importantly though, Facebook is THE social network site. It doesn't matter how cryptic their privacy settings are, or how difficult it is to customize your profile. If you're under 30 it's assumed you are on Facebook, and like I said earlier, your social life may depend on it.
After thinking about it though, I do think Facebook is a good product. It could not have gotten so popular if it wasn't. People always have complaints about the privacy settings and the IM tool they have is frankly horrible. But at the end of the day Facebook dominates the social network world and I imagine it will for a long time to come.
That being said, I've never looked closely at Facebook and considered why someone might choose to use it (besides the fact that EVERYBODY else does). It's worth noting that sites like Myspace allow much greater customization of one's homepage. It might even have been too customizable. The nice thing about Facebook is that you put in your information and your page comes out nice and neat.
Another appealing thing about Facebook is its fairly sophisticated privacy tools. If one knows how, it is easy to limit how much of one's profile is available to different people. That means when some old classmate from 10 years ago asks to be your friend, you don't have to worry that you're just giving away all your contact info to some guy who just wants you to join some goofy pyramid scam. Instead, you can create limited profiles and share only the info that you want to share. The problem with this (and it's a big one) is Facebook constantly updates and changes these privacy settings and learning the ins and outs of them can be both time consuming and quite tricky.
Most importantly though, Facebook is THE social network site. It doesn't matter how cryptic their privacy settings are, or how difficult it is to customize your profile. If you're under 30 it's assumed you are on Facebook, and like I said earlier, your social life may depend on it.
After thinking about it though, I do think Facebook is a good product. It could not have gotten so popular if it wasn't. People always have complaints about the privacy settings and the IM tool they have is frankly horrible. But at the end of the day Facebook dominates the social network world and I imagine it will for a long time to come.
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