I'm done. Here's my thoughts...
This was a very useful exercise. It presented a great deal of useful information.
I thought the live sessions we held downstairs were a great component of the course. I think we should continue to have these session weekly, and just have it open for anybody to drop in and ask questions. Not like anyone will have all the answers, but the more people looking for a solution, the quicker a solution can be found. It would also benefit to have questions answered in a public forum. We could do this every couple of weeks and weave in the "Tech Petting Zoo" idea from the last Library 2.0 webcast.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Teaching Tech
Last week I offered to send anyone on the staff an invitation to Gmail. The response to this invitation was fantastic! Eight people were sent addresses. I consider this my contribution for the 23 things teaching component! But I will be following up on this. Both Debbie and Collette are eager to learn more about using their account, and all the Google services it gives you access too. I thought I'd create a short introduction course which I can present at the semester's end, when all have time to attend.
Finding Podcasts
The most interesting search engine I checked out was a thing called "Podscope". It claims to be able to search podcasts, both audio and video, for the actual text of spoken words.
My first attempt was to search for "Telecaster" which is a type of electric guitar. No hits. I got less specific and used guitar, which immediately brought up a bunch of podcasts, including NPR music reviews.
Next, I tried "Donahue" (no, not "That Girl's" squeeze, but somebody who plays a Telecaster). Here is where things got interesting. The first couple of hits were for some radio show called "Dawn and Drew". So it appears that Podcast is taking the actual phonetic "noiseprint" waveforms of the text you type in, and comparing that to actual waveforms of podcasts. I can imaging that "Welcome to the the Dawn and Drew Morning Show" would look a lot like "Welcome to the Donahue Mourning Show", when he finally admits to himself that his wife was right-on about the consequences of supporting Ralph Nader. But that's water-under-the-bridge.
This process reminded me of the gymnastics Jin has to go through to type written Chinese into the computer. First, a program sits in-between any other program she is trying to use. You type into the program the romanized phonetic equivalent of the Chinese word you are trying to type. A list of phonetic matches comes up, and she chooses the most appropriate characters from a list of 30 or more possible matches. If you have found what you are looking for, you paste the characters into the document you are writing. Replace drawn Chinese characters with waveform "characters" and the Podscope process is about the same - but without the element of human selection, which accounts for so many bad hits in its result list! But since they give you the whole list, you can make that selection. This is ingenious! I can't wait to see how much it improves...
My first attempt was to search for "Telecaster" which is a type of electric guitar. No hits. I got less specific and used guitar, which immediately brought up a bunch of podcasts, including NPR music reviews.
Next, I tried "Donahue" (no, not "That Girl's" squeeze, but somebody who plays a Telecaster). Here is where things got interesting. The first couple of hits were for some radio show called "Dawn and Drew". So it appears that Podcast is taking the actual phonetic "noiseprint" waveforms of the text you type in, and comparing that to actual waveforms of podcasts. I can imaging that "Welcome to the the Dawn and Drew Morning Show" would look a lot like "Welcome to the Donahue Mourning Show", when he finally admits to himself that his wife was right-on about the consequences of supporting Ralph Nader. But that's water-under-the-bridge.
This process reminded me of the gymnastics Jin has to go through to type written Chinese into the computer. First, a program sits in-between any other program she is trying to use. You type into the program the romanized phonetic equivalent of the Chinese word you are trying to type. A list of phonetic matches comes up, and she chooses the most appropriate characters from a list of 30 or more possible matches. If you have found what you are looking for, you paste the characters into the document you are writing. Replace drawn Chinese characters with waveform "characters" and the Podscope process is about the same - but without the element of human selection, which accounts for so many bad hits in its result list! But since they give you the whole list, you can make that selection. This is ingenious! I can't wait to see how much it improves...
YouTube
NBC, CBS, CNN, YOUTUBE. Youtube is another network. It is amazing, and precious. It is an international treasure. It has changed the world. I have wasted many hours at this site.
Amongst the most useful videos I find are guitar tutorials. There are a host of players uploading little mini-lessons to learn individual techniques or specific songs. In addition, there are clips of the highest pantheon of guitar gods wailing at their best. I've heard that there is an ongoing spat with music publishers who feel that some of these lessons infringe on copyright.
Sometimes things can get a little dicey. I did a search on Kermit because I wanted to see clips of that famous amphibian. Instead I got Kermit the frog's reaction to "two girls and a cup"(WARNING, this video contains explicit and extremely objectionable content, and refers to another video which is beyond the pale of human comprehension - and has been removed from YouTube DO NOT ATTEMPT TO WATCH IT). I'd hate to have to explain this to a Sesame Street aged youngster.
But for fun, there is nothing more entertaining than to sit around on a rainy evening and watch people's pets, mentos and coke experimentation, extreme sporting mishaps, and candid-camera wanna-be's.
Amongst the most useful videos I find are guitar tutorials. There are a host of players uploading little mini-lessons to learn individual techniques or specific songs. In addition, there are clips of the highest pantheon of guitar gods wailing at their best. I've heard that there is an ongoing spat with music publishers who feel that some of these lessons infringe on copyright.
Sometimes things can get a little dicey. I did a search on Kermit because I wanted to see clips of that famous amphibian. Instead I got Kermit the frog's reaction to "two girls and a cup"(WARNING, this video contains explicit and extremely objectionable content, and refers to another video which is beyond the pale of human comprehension - and has been removed from YouTube DO NOT ATTEMPT TO WATCH IT). I'd hate to have to explain this to a Sesame Street aged youngster.
But for fun, there is nothing more entertaining than to sit around on a rainy evening and watch people's pets, mentos and coke experimentation, extreme sporting mishaps, and candid-camera wanna-be's.
Wikis in Libraries
When Wiki's get integrated into other library services it starts becoming exciting. Everyone is familiar with Amazon reviews... And almost everybody is WAITING for library vendors to release this in an OPAC.
OCLC's Worldcat is doing exactly this. This slick interface has it all, faceted searching, tag clouds, and integration with the largest bibliographic database in the known universe. It also has integrated a wiki for patrons and staff to comment on items (see the pdf " Wiki Comes to Worldcat", from 2005).
I think it would be wonderful if everytime a reference question was answered using a cataloged source, that question could be logged into the records wiki by the reference staff. That way, a more complete feel for the usefulness of the source good be ascertained by the user.
OCLC's Worldcat is doing exactly this. This slick interface has it all, faceted searching, tag clouds, and integration with the largest bibliographic database in the known universe. It also has integrated a wiki for patrons and staff to comment on items (see the pdf " Wiki Comes to Worldcat", from 2005).
I think it would be wonderful if everytime a reference question was answered using a cataloged source, that question could be logged into the records wiki by the reference staff. That way, a more complete feel for the usefulness of the source good be ascertained by the user.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Cocktails Anyone?
This will be the first site I will visit if I do not win the laptop. Basically, you can specify the ingredients you have, and it will spit back all the libations you can construct. Unfortunately, I don't have a bar. But I made pretend I did, and heavens, some people are very creative.
If I get drunk and fall down and hit my head against the side of the coffee table and die, then won't you feel bad? So maybe if you win the laptop, you will give it to me? Maybe?
If I get drunk and fall down and hit my head against the side of the coffee table and die, then won't you feel bad? So maybe if you win the laptop, you will give it to me? Maybe?
OnLine Applications
Online applications are great - and are going to be even more common as computers and devices get smaller and more connected. I've been using Google Docs and Spreadsheets since it was Writely, and expect to see more and more of these applications appear.
I'm a big fan of the KISS concept. So whereas I agree with Ramona that Zoho has a ton more features than Google, to me that's not necesarily a good thing (most of the time I do my writing in a simple text editor)! I'll have to play around with it before I jump ship from Google. It is really important to me to keep the number of things I have to log onto to a minimum - that's why I really enjoy the Google suite of applications. Gmail is my main "civilian" email account, so signing in is something I do anyway.
I'm a big fan of the KISS concept. So whereas I agree with Ramona that Zoho has a ton more features than Google, to me that's not necesarily a good thing (most of the time I do my writing in a simple text editor)! I'll have to play around with it before I jump ship from Google. It is really important to me to keep the number of things I have to log onto to a minimum - that's why I really enjoy the Google suite of applications. Gmail is my main "civilian" email account, so signing in is something I do anyway.
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