Thing #42 -- Music 2.0

I've been a heavy iTunes user for years. When our home DVD/CD player started having trouble reading CDs we imported all our music into iTunes and loaded it onto an iPod which is hooked up to our home audio system. This lets us combine our CDs and purchased downloads in one place. We never listen to actual CDs anymore.

I also began listening to internet radio at least 5 years ago (probably longer). I've used Live365, iTunes radio, and other services that no longer exist. When I got my iPod the MPR Radio app (which streams their 3 stations plus Radio Heartland) was one of the first I put on it. My husband introduced me to last.fm a few months ago, when he sent me a link to a station he made. I like the way it lets you follow chains of connections between artists to discover some you might like but didn't know about. Also the ability to create a station based on a particular artist or genre/tag.

I big problem with listening to internet radio for me, especially at work, is buffering. It's hard to enjoy music when you only hear it a few seconds at a time! I think the campus network gives lower priority to streaming radio than other applications.

One type of music I like is what I call "contemporary classical"--not the big orchestral symphony stuff, but things composed during the second half of the 20th century or later. Here is a station built with the 'minimalism' tag.




Even with all these options, I don't know if broadcast radio will go away. I still listen to it, especially when I'm driving. Even so, the internet has had a positive impact on my broadcast listening. I love online playlists! If I'm driving and hear a song I like but don't know, I make a note of the time it played. Later, I'll look it up on the radio's web site. And now that I am familiar with sites like last.fm, I can use them to find more of that artist's music to decide if I really like them or it was just that one song.

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 #30 -- More with Delicious

I hadn't actually created a Delicious account back in Thing 11, so I started this Thing by doing that. The built-in security checkers made that a little frustrating, however. I have been using the same password for all the accounts I create as part of the Things--makes it easier to remember. But Delicious kept telling me it shared too many letters with my username. After several username/password combinations I finally had to admit defeat and choose a completely different one. Hope I remember it!

As a new Delicious user I haven't explored it much beyond bookmarking. I tried to standardize my tags (controlled vocabulary is a familiar concept to librarians) and found the batch renaming and tagging functions useful as I developed my taxonomy. There is now a tag roll on my blog's sidebar.

One of the things I did was go through all the email messages and notes I've been collecting of web sites that I want to look at and possibly include on subject guides I maintain. Adding these sites to Delicious will make this process easier. I can produce a list of possible sites by tagging them for particular guides. It would be nice to hook the sites I've chosen on Delicious to the guide web pages so they update automatically when I add or delete one. I tried the basic link roll functionality, but it didn't quite work the way I wanted it too. Guess I'll have to tinker with it some more later.

Thing #30 -- More Ways to Use RSS

I use Google Reader for my RSS feeds and once I added the Reader gadget to my iGoogle home page (as part of Thing 28) that became the primary way I view them. I'll usually check several times a week, skimming the list, and only reading the ones that interest me. Organizing feeds into folders really helps. I have folders for general library feeds, specific library subjects, news, technology, and a few others. It helps me keep my reading focused; many times I don't check every folder each time--deciding which folders have interest for me depending on my mood or circumstances. Using folders also keeps any one list of posts from getting too long and overwhelming.

Even so, the technology folder still has a lot in it. Both Lifehacker and Engadget, for example, post several times an hour, and it's hard to weed out the few gems I care about from all the rest. I was glad to discover FeedRinse as part of this Thing, and am experimenting with it. I created "rinsed" versions of my technology related feeds, based on what tags are in a post, and set up a separate folder for those. This will allow me to compare what's getting through my filters with the full blog. Once it seems to be giving me just the posts I care about I'll remove the full feeds from my reader.

The concept behind Spreed is an interesting one. I can see its appeal for some people, those whose job requires them to keep up on all the news in a particular area. It's nice that Spreed provides options to speed read a story or see the full article, and to set the words per minute. I had a hard time with it, though. On slower speeds the story didn't flow--my mind kept treating each screen of 2-4 words as a distinct chunk rather than knitting them together to make a sentence. Increasing the speed made me tense, as my comprehension tried to keep up with my reading.

In the "file it away for later" category is Simple Tracking.com. Next time I have a package to track it will be nice to have a feed that updates when the package's status changes.

I also may try twitterfeed later on, depending on how much I end up using Twitter, and how many people follow me. Twitterfeed would be an easy way for libraries with both blogs and Twitter accounts to keep users informed about the library, by passing blog posts into their Twitter stream. A painless way to reach users where they are, in whichever social medium they prefer.

I'll save more things with delicious for my next post.

Thing #11 -- Tagging and del.icio.us

One fun and useful aspect of tagging is the ESP Game. I first saw this in a presentation at ACRL last spring. The librarian said he showed it in his library instruction classes as an example of the benefits of using controlled vocabulary. The team behind the ESP Game is attempting to label all the images on the web by making it fun for people to provide tags for them. Once you start playing it can be addictive.

I'm a little of two minds about the usefulness of tags in libraries. Allowing users to add tags to the catalog makes more sense to me in public libraries than academic ones, but maybe that's because I haven't seen a good application of them in an academic setting. I know there is this strong movement towards involving the user,and for the most part I'm okay with that, but it also seems like we could be dumbing things down. As an academic librarian, where learning is supposed to be part of the point, I have a hard time with that.

I've known about del.icio.us for a couple of years now, but haven't used it. Whenever I'd explore the site, all the bookmarks and tags seemed overwhelming without a purpose for my exploration. And whenever I was searching for web sites on a subject, it never occurred to me to check out del.icio.us. So this was kind of a "lightbulb" moment for me--next time I'm looking for subject resources, or researching something for myself, I'll go to del.icio.us.

I also never thought to create a del.icio.us account for my bookmarks--although I could have used one recently when my work computer was replaced. While most of my personal files were transferred just fine, my browser profile, including my bookmarks, was wiped out.

Thing #4 -- Flickr

I've explored Flickr a bit, primarily for personal reasons (it's one of the ways my brother-in-law shares photos with family), but my library-related experience with Flickr has mostly been limited to seeing it in Library 2.0 presentations I've attended. I confess for the most part I've had a hard time seeing ways to integrate Flickr usefully into my job. But browsing what other libraries have done made me think that maybe there are ways to use it.

I can see applications for it in archives and special collections, such as the Library of Congress site. I was made aware of their Flickr page early this year, and included it on my library's web site as the site of the month for February. Flickr is a way to reach a wider audience of people who can potentially identify and provide background information for photographs in library collections. Right after library school I did an internship in the archives of a summer dance institute. We were trying to identify dancers in old photographs by taking them (the photos, that is) to staff meetings. Having something like Flickr available then would have helped us get broader input.

I liked what the Clemens and Alcuin libraries did with their book displays--it would be easy for us to set up something similar. I was also intrigued by their library tour, but then started asking questions. Is Flickr a better place for a library virtual tour than the library's own web site? Is that where people are more likely to find it? Or is it just a matter of getting the library out into other places, as well as the web site? The rollover map is a nice feature, and I see that Flickr applications are the next Thing. So maybe my future explorations for Thing #5 will allow me to see more uses for Flickr in the library world.

Oh, and here's my image. The warm weather last week had me thinking that maybe spring is here.

(Photo by lapillus)