Thing #36 -- Generators

I played around a lot with the Generator Blog, Big Huge Labs and Glass Giant for Thing #5 and Thing #6, so I didn't go back to them this time. The category I was most interested in was the Tag Cloud links. Tag clouds have intrigued me ever since I became aware of them. I like the way their visual communication style makes search results, blog postings or other "data sets" easy to comprehend. At a conference session a couple years ago I wrote in my notes, "How do you make a tag cloud?" and I quickly replaced the standard label list on this blog with a tag cloud.

One of the most creative uses of tag clouds I've seen is Hindsight is Always 20/20 by R. Luke Dubois. This project takes the text of each of the President's State of the Union addresses and presents them as word clouds in the format of eye charts. Browsing through the charts, it's easy to discover what issues were important (or believed to be important) at different stages of our country's history.

Below is a cloud I created with Wordle using the words in this blog. I like the many options the site provides for customizing font, color, and word layout.

I did go to ToonDoo to find a library-related comic. The one I chose is by subDes, who has done many strips with a library theme. I don't like the options the site gives for embedding comics, however. One makes you have to scroll through the strip, which lessens some of its impact. The other option doesn't seem to work, it just shows blank space.

by subDes | Create your own Cartoon at www.toondoo.com

Thing #35 -- Books 2.0

As an academic librarian, I don't get much chance to help people find books to read just because they want to--mostly they're looking for books for class assignments. Those students who are looking for books for pleasure are thrown off by the fact that all our fiction isn't in one place like at their public library, and they don't want to browse huge chunks of the P call number range to find a book. (Or sometimes they want audio books to listen too as they drive home for vacations. We don't have any of those.) This is changing, though. We're trying to foster "extracurricular" reading on campus by beginning a browsing collection. A small portion of the book budget is now dedicated to purchasing books for pleasure reading, and these books are shelved in a prominent place at the entrance to the main stacks area. No confusing LC call numbers, instead it's alphabetical by author. I'm interested to see how much that collection will be used once students really discover it.

Our library also has a collection of juvenile books. These are to support the Education department, but they are also used by students, faculty, and staff with children. I was interested if the sites listed for this Thing under Children's Books would be useful for the Children's Literature Guide I maintain for the Education department. I already link to International Children's Digital Library, and was disappointed to see Lookybook no longer online.

I spent a lot of time looking around BookCrossing to if any books had been released near me, and viewing the histories of books that had several entries. I will definitely keep this site in mind the next time I have books I no longer want to keep. I also looked at BookStumpers. This site would have been useful a couple of years ago when I tried, unsuccessfully, to discover the name of a book a friend remembered from her childhood.

Thing #34 -- Online Answer Sites

I'm familiar with Slam the Boards, as I participated for several months when it first started. Primarily I answered questions on Yahoo! Answers, but I also did a few on WikiAnswers and Askville. During one session I focused on song lyrics questions, which are easy to answer using Google. I would also look for and answer questions related to the Twin Cities (travel, restaurants, etc.) or subjects in which I have expertise. In my answers I always made sure to include the fact that I was a librarian. It's been close to a year since I've participated, however. I began doing more virtual reference at my library, and with that and my regular reference desk hours I didn't feel I had any more time to devote to reference outside. And online answer sites do take a lot of time. The hardest thing for me wasn't answering the questions, it was finding suitable questions to respond to. Even filtering by specific subjects or keywords still left a lot of questions to browse through. I didn't feel comfortable answering any dealing with relationships or medical matters. Or the open ended questions that didn't really have an answer. I wonder if the people asking those view online answer sites as a type of social network--they're just looking to have a conversation with other people.

In a way, that's part of the appeal of these sites--they're the online equivalent of asking around when you want to know something. Studies have shown that's what people tend to do first, rather than turning to "experts" or researching for themselves. Even though they are asking an anonymous community rather than friends and family, they are still drawn to online answer sites over more traditional, library-based methods. Other qualities that make the sites bigger draws over reference librarians for some people are their easy availability, 24/7, and the ability for people to remain anonymous if they choose.

The other type of question I avoided were ones that appeared to be homework assignments. As an academic librarian, my philosophy is to be more concerned with teaching students how to find information for themselves, rather than simply giving it to them. This is often the type of encounter I'll have at the reference desk, but it's probably not the type of answer most online questioners are looking for.

Thing #33 -- Travel 2.0

At this point in my life I don't travel very much, and when I do it's usually to known places rather than new ones. I also tend to not pay a lot of attention to other people's reviews--it's hard to know what their criteria for judging are, or how similar those criteria are to mine. So I was a little skeptical about spending a lot of time exploring the sites listed for this Thing. But I can see the appeal they would have for other people.

Several of the mashup sites interested me, however. I like the focus of Green Routes, and can see myself using it to find places to visit on "travels" close to home. With my interest in food and wine, 2 other sites interested me: Wines and Times, because I have enjoyed visiting many wineries in the past, and My Kugelhopf for its focus on food and enjoyable writing. And the next time I do take a trip I'll have to remember MapVivo (provided it's still around in this quickly changing 2.0 world!). It would be fun to use to map out a trip, as well as to share it with friends and family afterwards.

How does any of this fit into my (academic) library? I don't think it does. We hardly ever get travel-related questions at reference, and have removed most of the non-academic related pages of links from our web site, figuring students have other places they are more likely to look for that kind of information than the library.