Thing 13: Tagging

I love tagging. I know that there should be some set of agreed upon words to describe a thing, or a subject, but we as librarians need to get away from the antiquated versions of these. "Young Adults" or "Juvenile" anyone? How about my favorite pet peeve from our OPAC: "nonmusical sound recording"... perhaps you mean audiobook?

This is where my other pet peeve comes into play. It is almost impossible in a traditional OPAC to look up a genre. Or especially a subgenre. One place you can is at the Bedford Public Library because they have embraced library things tags and integrated them in the system.

For instance, when I look up Neuromancer, it gives me the regular subject headings, such as

Science fiction.
Hugo Award winner -- 1985.
Hugo Award winners.
Nebula Award winner -- 1984.
Nebula Award winners.

But it also gives me the option at the bottom to look up these tags

20th century artificial intelligence computers cyberpunk cyberspace dystopia Gibson Nebula
Award sci-fi science fiction sf sff speculative fiction virtual reality William Gibson

which I find much more useful if I am wanting more books like this.

Twitter 2

I just have to give props to Brent Spiner on Twitter. He was Data on Star Trek and I am not a HUGE star trek nerd but his tweets are almost like reading a story or sitcom or ... they are FUNNY.

Thing 12: Twitter

I started a twitter account a couple of months ago. My first tweet:

Playing with the iPhone and twitted10:02 PM Apr
2nd from mobile
web

The last time I heard about twitter? I guess that was in my car yesterday morning listening to 102.1 the edge and they said something about how they were on Twitter as they talked... I didn't try to look them up. [ed. I just did and I couldn't find it on their website so maybe I was wrong]. Diane Rehm from NPR does the same thing. The guys on MSNBC's Morning Joe do it too. And on NPR this morning they were talking about how the rest of the world is getting information out about Iran. You guessed it: Twitter...

My library is doing Twitter... we've got it posted on the front page http://twitter.com/ArlingtonTXLib. I'm not in charge of it but it looks interesting (I'm nominally "in charge" of the adult blog).

Thing 11: Instant Messaging

I used to instant message 9 years ago. I stopped doing it, partially because I only have one friend that still uses AIM (he won't get a facebook page). There was some point when it was cool to randomly chat with people that lived near you and I remember doing that was kind of fun... and I guess potentially dangerous as well even though I never tried to meet up with anyone. Our library is practicing with meebo and I really hope we start using it in a more publicized manner because I think that it would give people who either are shy on the phone or perhaps even our deaf patrons a way to communicate with us. I've used the facebook IM fairly recently as well as the Yahoo Messenger via Yahoo Mail.

Thing 10: Ning

From what I can tell about ning from an administrative standpoint, it would only be useful if you have a specific use for it. Arlington Reads tried to set one up for its volunteers to be able to connect and get useful information. You can see that there are sort of spammer joiners, which isn't helpful.

From a user standpoint, I don't see what the point of it is, unless I went to a website that I really liked and their community pages were on ning. For instance, Texas Prairie Farms updates the people that buy their produce on what is going on.

I don't think I will use this beyond this Thing, especially with their terms of service.

Thing 9: more Facebook

Organizational pages are interesting on facebook. Currently I am a fan of UNT Media Library, Texas, Target, Inappropriate Giggling, Mexican Food, Sarcasm!, Not being on fire, BORDERS BOOKS & MUSIC, Hugs, sleeping, Reading, NPR Marketplace, {Jane Austen}, Buddha, and Nine Inch Nails.

As you can see only5 of those could actually be considered an "organization" by any real standards. So should my library be right next to giggling or sarcasm? I think if it done right, absolutely yes. Because you are going where the people are. Borders does this really well. They have videos, free content, including recipes and free chapters of books. This makes me want to shop at Borders when I would really have gone to Barnes & Noble before. So why am I a fan of Borders and not B&N on facebook? It is because one of my friends was a fan and it suggested that I be a fan. That is the only reason I am a fan of any of these things because I wouldn't purposefully go out and look for Borders or Target. But there it was on one of my friends pages and one click added me. Simple. Easy. Viral Marketing.

Thing 8: Facebook

I migrated from Myspace to Facebook about a month ago. A couple of things I've noticed:

• Not all of my Myspace friends are on facebook. And it is almost exclusively those that have degrees vs. those that don't. Those that don't still use Myspace. My husband won't get a facebook account because of their terms of service.
• It is easier to use. Everything is in one place and I don't have to click to a million different terribly layed out pages to see what people are up to. Myspace tried to attempt this with the home screen, but they separate all of the categories which makes it confusing.
• Games on facebook are easier to do. But at the same time they are just about as annoying. I signed up for a bunch when I first started, but the only ones I am interested in continuing is a farmer game and a vampire game. The rest I could care less, but I'm still getting sweets or drinks or fish sent to me. *sigh* I feel if I opt out of them other people will get annoyed.
• I like the idea of being able to send links to people, especially since no one I know uses the sharing function on google reader or publicizes their delicious account.
• One thing I've noticed is you have to be really careful what you say regardless. Does your step-mother need to know where you went drinking or (as one of my facebook friends found out) your co-workers know you are looking for another job?

Thing 7: RSS feeds

In my last post I mentioned that I've had Google Reader for awhile now, but one thing occured to me in watching the Common Craft video (I LOVE their work)--why don't I subscribe to any non-blog RSS feeds. The answer is I'm not really sure... I just know that most of the time I don't need to know if a website has changed recently.

Although I like the idea of Snack Upon. You put in a delicious username and it brings a feed of different RSS content that person might like.