I find the creation and maintenance of blogs very easy and fun!  I update my family blog often, and knowing that my family and friends read/see my entries keeps things interesting. I really want to create one for my classes this school year, so we can discuss our readings/topics differently every once in awhile.

After I created my LIS blog, I started reading lots of educational and library/information science blogs.  I love them!  Some of my favorite include TametheWeb, Stephen’s Lighthouse, The Shifted Librarian, Library Stuff, YPulse (there’s another one for Ybooks), and the Information Literacy Land of Confusion Blog. I was not familiar with Adventures in Educational Blogging, but I just checked it out, and I gotta say it’s pretty cool and definitely useful for anyone in education.  (No activity since June 30th, so she might be on summer vacation.) I love the amount of technological tools she uses, links to, and reviews.  Her site serves as a great introduction to many Web 2.0 tools that I was not aware of.  I’m going to subscribe to this site!  (I use Netvibes as my RSS aggregator.)

Overall, I am pleased with the design of my web pages. The colors, style, and layout are consistent with each other and pretty similar to the high school’s web page. I think students would find it pretty user-friendly, navigable, and clean. I have to send a shout-out and big thank-you to Renee Keilman who taught me how to design a page with one large table, making my site look more “advanced” than it had previously. Check out my first draft below. (Yikes!–old school, right? )

Nevertheless, I have “big plans” to do more with the site. Ultimately, I would like our school to be able to use these pages. So, for a little fun, I would like to create a series of pages that link students to “quiz/survey” (a series of informal questions) that might help them choose a book of their interests. I would also like to create a page that allows students to login with their ID numbers and choose the summer reading book, which, in turn, would send a message to the summer reading coordinator. With this information, the coordinator could set up a database, listing all of the students signed up for each book and then separating the students into discussion groups.

Let me know what you think.

Here’s the link: http://domin.dom.edu/students/carrcynt/LIS753/MainSumRead1.html

Columbia College Chicago Library’s homepage is divided into four color-coded sections—Research, Help, Services, and About—and then sub-divided into the most frequently needed informational categories. This table arrangement makes the page user-friendly, accessible, and aesthetically pleasing, which follows SM’s principle #3: manage to focus users’ attention and principle #6: strive for simplicity. While there is not a search box located on the homepage, the search boxes (found in the Research section) maintain a consistent color scheme and format. One can easily change to an advanced, an I-Share, an eBook, or a WorldCat search as well.

The Ames Library’s homepage also uses a table format to sort information; however, four main categories are listed in the center of the page—Resources, Technology, Services, and Help with Research¬¬, three other sections are listed on the right side of the page—Quick Links/Catalog Search Box, Library Information and Highlights, and the left side of the page features a Meebo AskAmes box, other ways to contact librarians, and a search box for the whole library. The Quick Links search box allows for several types of searching (by title, author, etc.) and/or advanced, I-Share, and WorldCat searches. While there are many links located on the homepage, this design follows SM’s principle #8: communicate effectively with “visible language” through clear organization, economization, and simple typography.

Both of these web sites account for users need to scan, not read (as cited in SM’s 10 Principles of Effective Web Design). However, one “mistake,” according to Jakob Nielsen’s Top 10 Web Design Mistakes of 2005, of both the Ames Library’s and the Columbia College Chicago Library’s web sites is the unclear differentiation between visited and unvisited links. Different colors are used on the Ames Library site, but the colors are too similar to each other. The Columbia College site does not show color differentiation for visited links (nor does the Rebecca Crown Library web site).

The Rebecca Crown Library web site consistently follows the design and format of Dominican’s other web pages. The site also utilizes white space and a table format for dividing important informational links, making the page easy to scan. However, the division is not clearly or colorfully organized, making the page somewhat muddled. Thus, following Columbia College Chicago Library’s format with color-coded sections and lines would enhance the overall aesthetics of the Crown Library page. Another way to improve the Rebecca Crown Library web site would be to incorporate a search box—hopefully one that allows for different types of searching–on its homepage similar to the Ames Library web site. This would help lessen the amount of clicking one would have do in order to find the desired information/resource. The last way to improve the Rebecca Crown Library’s web site would be to put the Meebo, Ask Away box, and other library contact information on the homepage (again similar to the Ames Library site), which would provide users with a clearer picture of assistance.

What is Facebook? (brief background & information)

On February 4th, 2004, Mark Zuckerberg launched The Facebook exclusively for Harvard students, but within four months, 30 more college networks were added due to its extreme popularity. The site branched out to work networks, and finally in 2006, Facebook opened to anyone with an email address. Facebook’s growth in the fall of 2007 was staggering; over 1 million new users signed up every week, totaling over 50 million active users. It is the 6th most trafficked site in the US, a top photo sharing site, and the 5th most valuable US Internet company.

Anyone can join the network and create a profile, make friends, and enjoy the plethora of applications offered. However, libraries (or any other group) are able to join, create pages—with blogs, pictures, and videos–, and have users become members or “fans” of their organizations.

Why is Facebook a Good Web 2.0 Tool?

Some of the reasons Facebook has been rated so highly for librarians is because of its popularity and its group lists for librarian-centric patrons like FacebookAppsForLibraries, Library 2.0 Interest Group, Librarians and Facebook, NextGen Librarians, Digital Reference in Facebook, American Library Association Members, and Libraries and Librarians. These groups all have over 2000 members who share web 2.0 tools and technologies, link to news stories and information, and discuss different tools and resources for schools and libraries. Thus, librarians can network and collaborate with other professionals in order to get new ideas and to discuss tools.

Additionally, as Susan Jacobs stated, “with so many students, teachers, and librarians on Facebook these days, the social media site has become somewhat of a platform, offering developers a way to create and share application for education.” And Facebook provides all sorts of great tools designed to make learning easier for students, including the following: Flashcards, Wikiseek Search, JSTOR Seartch, Notely, Study Groups, Get Homework Help, Notecentric, Class Notes, Calendar, To-Do List, etc. Facebook also offers teachers and librarians several useful education applications that they can implement in the curriculum: SlideShare (create and send presentations to students), Webinaria Screencast Recorder (record and share videos with students), and BookTag (share and loans out books to students, plus create helpful quizzes for studying).

Moreover, according to TechCrunch, Facebook has just launched an instant messaging tool as well as additional privacy controls, including the ability to create various friends groups with different permissions for each. While the chat will only be one-to-one for a while, there is no limit to the number of chat sessions that can be open at any one time. Users won’t have to install chat as an additional application; it will automatically show up the bottom of the screen.

How can libraries use Facebook?

Any library can make a Facebook page that informs patrons of upcoming events, links them to library and online resources, starts discussions of current topics/books/etc., and allows patrons to make suggestions. However, school districts and academic library systems may benefit from a Facebook page the most because (1) it’s so popular with users of these generations and (2) it could be a fun way to connect students, staff, and librarians across the district/campus. With the new privacy features, one might feel more comfortable joining such a group and sharing information with others. A Facebook page would allow patrons to become more familiar with the staff and the services of the library in a non-confrontational or intimidating way.

While there are other social networking sites (like MySpace or Ning) out there, Facebook may be the best for libraries due to its innovative applications, new privacy and chat features, and overall popularity with patrons of all ages.

One of the first consumer products to include tagging was the Lotus Magellan product in 1988; in 2001, Bitzi, a digital media encyclopedia, started to allow tagging of any media that had a URL. But tagging didn’t become extremely popular until sites like Flickr and del.icio.us allowed users to set their own tags. However, because users were allowed to informally and personally choose their own tags, more ambiguity was created. Nevertheless, tagging between web/blog servers has led to the rise of folksonomy classification, the concept of social bookmarking, and other forms of social software–empowering Web 2.0 tools and users. More and more web users not only use tagging to find more information or products, but they also tag their own pictures, blogs, etc. Even libraries are jumping on the tagging bandwagon–LibraryThing, probably being the most prominent.

On his site, Thomas Vander Wal, a principal and senior consultant for InfoCloud Solutions, Inc., and a technology blogger, discusses how tagging services still have a long way to go in order increase portability, functionality, and disambiguity. Technorati is one company/site that has made great strides in trying to set up blog tags and tag searches in order to solve the problem of too many tag term variations; however, many problems still exist.

I found Vander Wal’s analysis intriguing because I have found myself lost in the world of tag clouds that sometimes irrationally direct me to random sites/information that have nothing to do with my original topic. Tagging is just another example of a great Web 2.0 tool that has progressed over time, but still has a long way to go in order to become more functional and user-friendly. Libraries need to be aware of both the advantages and disadvantages of tagging in order to better assist patrons in finding their desired information, while also providing users with room for creativity to make their own tags.

One new search engine that was featured in this Newsweek article was Mahalo.com, which markets itself as the world’s first human-generated search engine. Mahalo uses human beings in seeking out the sites that best fit the user’s request. Mahalo “guides” or experts, who are paid, submit search results pages to a centralized database, which users can then access for search results. Their results do not contain any links to spam, mediocre, or deceptive sites. It also breaks the search term down into different types of results for the user. For example, “julius caesar” is broken down by the top 7 recommended sites, and then sub-categories about his life or other genres related to the term like movie, play, Shakespeare, blogs, etc. I love the guide note feature, located on the right-hand side of the screen, that shows a picture of the search term (if available) and lists fast facts–very user-friendly and engaging.
There are some downsides of Mahalo.com, though. One concern is that Mahalo does not have pages written for all search terms, i.e. “Antigone.” However, the page will return Google results alongside tabbed results from other search engines and online services, so a user isn’t at a complete loss. One can also request Mahalo guides to write a page for a specific search term.

Despite Mahalo.com being an “expert”-generated site, it still contains some Web 2.0 features. For example, one can sign up for a RSS feed of Mahalo’s top newsfeeds or add/become a friend of Mahalo or Mahalo Social, so you can share your results with friends/colleagues. Plus, if you use Mahalo Follow, you can simultaneously submit links to your Twitter or Del.icio.us accounts. They also allow the public to recommend links for a page or discuss a page on the message board. There is even a program, called Mahalo Greenhouse, where anyone can write search result pages and get paid for each page that is accepted to Mahalo (note–you have to be accepted by the experts!).

After spending some time with Mahalo, I am impressed. As a librarian, I would list this search engine on the library’s webpage for users. Of course, this site won’t help all users since there are still many terms that do not have pages written for them yet, but at least Mahalo supplies some of the best results for a given topic, rather than searching through the millions of pages/links listed on the basic search engine sites.

The first library I looked at was my own public library. It does, indeed, have a blog that a librarian updates relatively frequently, announcing upcoming library and community events, interesting reads, etc. While the posts are brief and informative, it’s hard to tell if patrons actually read the blog since there are usually no responses to the posts. If the library would like patrons to respond, what might help is adding a catchy phrase or question to which patrons can respond and possibly even dialogue with other patrons.

Another public library in my vicinity uses a form of blogging, which they call LibVlog. I love this! They post videos that they have created and some (I believe) that they have found from YouTube. The video posts range from a weekly update about “what’s happening this week at the library” to book promotions to informational videos about a variety of topics (presidents, how to make a book/movie) and reviews of books and music. Again, it’s hard to tell how often these videos are viewed, but I’m guessing that more patrons would watch these videos rather than just read a promotional post about upcoming events (they are much more engaging and entertaining).

I was surprised about the lack of high school libraries’ blogs in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. Many of the schools in the northwest suburbs often claim to be on the crest of technological wave, but not many of the school libraries have adopted Web 2.0 tools, which is surprising given the fact that their patrons are very familiar and adept with these tools. One high school library blog I did come across, though, uses their posts to promote and review books. Students have responded to a couple of the posts, and they have added book reviews of their own. However, the post numbers are minimal. Nevertheless, the fact that this school library has a blog does help in showing that they are on the forefront of connecting with their patrons in different ways.

I decided to check out one other library blog for comparison’s sake, so I looked at the Library of Congress’s blog. I have to admit LC’s blog is pretty interesting. Most of the posts relate to noteworthy issues related to LC’s collection, but there are several others about blogging and other Web 2.0 tools/resources. Plus, people actually read and respond to the posts. This blog has even been nominated for SXSW Web Award!

After looking at just a couple of these blogging examples, I can definitely see how more libraries could use blogs to promote their services and to reach more patrons. 2 best = LC’s and Arlington Heights.

Sometimes I find myself irritated when my husband is tuned into his laptop while watching TV and trying to grade, but I think this multi-tasking is an ever-growing trend in our world today, especially with the teenagers I serve. My students often tell me they spend their nights doing homework, IMing, reading MySpace/Facebook blogs, watching TV, and listening to music–all at the same time. I’m not sure how they can accomplish all of those tasks at once (I’m more of 2–maybe 3–item multi-tasker.), but they do.

Recently, I was reading a post on Stephen’s Lighthouse where he references 2 YPulse articles about college students and videos. The statistics are fascinating but not surprising.

College Students Love their Video (YPulse)

College Students Watch The Most Video @ Mom & Dad’s

Of course, these statistics point to the ever-growing recognition that we, as librarians, need to reach our patrons in multiple ways, but one of the fastest growing methods may be through online videos. As a future school library media specialist, one way I could reach more students is by creating video booktalks and/or short informational (yet humorous–always keep ‘em laughing) lessons about researching/library resources and later uploading them to YouTube and the school website. As an avid reader and teacher, I would love to find videos of book descriptions and reviews that would be entertaining yet informative. However, I think students–especially those who are not avid readers or users of the library–would especially like these videos because they could fast forward through topics they are not interested in, create tags and comments, or even better, make their own video posts/booktalks/responses. Students love watching their peers in videos. Asking students to create a short video about a book, a library resource, or an information/research skill might increase student participation in the library since they could engage in authentic creation. But more importantly, creating videos & YouTube posts would help the library be seen as more than just a card catalog or print warehouse.

Florida’s AskALibrarian has already involved students in video production, and they are getting a little press about their efforts. Check out the finalists’ videos. They are funny.

Titled: The 2008 Hero Awards

http://youtube.com/watch?v=JnWQtgXgU-I