Loving wifi!

I've been sitting in the waiting room of my VW dealer for the last hour and a half waiting while they give my Jetta an oil change, new battery, and a couple of other things. Thankfully, they have wifi! So I've been working while I'm here... catching up on email, RSS, Project Play and other miscellaneous stuff. It's so awesome to be able to get some work done and not feel like I'm losing time out of my work day.

As I caught up on all of the Project Play blogs while I've been waiting, I am more and more impressed with the project and all of you! Even if you've been frustrated or pressed for time, you've kept going and are embracing the process. I'm so proud of everything you all have accomplished and really am looking forward to next semester.

Thanks for all of your hard work!!!

Fresh perspective

Well, I'm back after being off for almost a week for an unexpected funeral for a family friend and then to recover from a bad cold. I was a bit panicked last week from the idea of having to take time off from work that I hadn't planned on because my to do list is long, but there's nothing like a sudden loss to give you a fresh perspective on life. Too bad I needed that kind of reminder to realize what's truly important in life and that I've been wasting way too much energy worrying about things that just don't matter. It's time to be thankful for what I have, what I've accomplished, and whose love I'm surrounded with right now, in this moment, and I am truly blessed.

I hope your Thanksgiving celebrations were a balm for your soul and that returning to work this week has been smooth and easy. There are still two weeks to finish up Semester 1 of Project Play! Be sure to let me know if you need any help.

Wonderful wikis

I love pbwiki! It's so easy to use, especially when you want to add media like videos or images. Whenever I set up a new wiki, they send me an incredibly friendly email message sharing tips on how to use the wiki and links to help files on the web. Great customer service!

At a Come & Play day in the computer lab this week, a Project Player added a link to their library's web site in Wikipedia. It was so fun to see the excitement when they saw how easy it was to do! Like a breath of fresh air surrounded them and filled them up. Very cool.

Delectably del.icio.us

It took me a while to warm up to del.icio.us, but I'm not sure why. I'm sort of a control freak, so maybe it was that I couldn't style the page the way I want to. Or maybe it was simply having to get used to tags. I don't know. At any rate, I LOVE social bookmarking now and am slowly growing my list of links. Feel free to visit my account at http://del.icio.us/owlsbeth to see what I'm tagging lately.

I also LOVE that you can subscribe to people's lists of links! It's a great way to discover new sites and super easy since they're fed right into my Google Reader. I'm planning on playing around with their link rolls and tag rolls features - my head is swimming with loads of ideas for how they could be used. I just have to find more time to play!

What's your favorite thing about del.icio.us? Or what holds you back from using it?

Come & Play dates

I hosted my 2nd Project Play "Come & Play" date this morning and was happy to have 5 people in and out during the time slot. It's so much fun to help people with Project Play, and I think everyone made some progress, so that's good. But I decided there's something I want to encourage, maybe even demand for the rest of the Project...

No More Apologies!

It seems like our first instinct when we are behind or struggling with something, is to apologize or feel like we're not going fast enough. Why is that? We're dealing with new things, things that stretch our limits, things we haven't explored before. So why apologize?

No more! We need to be proud of what we're accomplishing with this Project! Proud of how we're persevering even though we might feel uncomfortable or too busy to cope! Proud of even signing up to participate in this crazy endeavor!

So stop apologizing and be proud. Thanks to everyone who came in today to play. I enjoyed it and am looking forward to the next session!

Diggin' LibraryThing

I'm using my LibraryThing account to track books I want to read, rather than books in my own collection. Love all the cool tools they have to let you stick info from your account into other things. I think I'll try their blog widget next to stick my "want to reads" into my sidebar here. I love that the info is only as good as the people contributing the content, because it can be fun to just stumble on strange things every once in a while.

When I have more time, I'm definitely going to play around with the suggestions feature. I'm always looking for something new to read, and this will be a great readers' advisory tool for me since I'm not on the front lines anymore. Loads of fun ahead!

Flickr fun

When I went to the Internet Librarian conference in Monterey last Fall, I went to dinner at the Sand Bar & Grill on Rick's recommendation (thanks, Rick!). This is a photo I took of the place. They had great food and service, but I loved the feeling of hanging off the pier, with all of the marina in view, including sea lions swimming right below. I posted the picture in my Flickr account after my trip.

This summer, I received an interesting email requesting the use of this photo by Schmap Guides. They wanted to use it in their 3rd edition guide to Monterey and Carmel. I said yes, and now it's part of their guide. You can see the guide & my photo here. I didn't make any money on the deal, but it's fun to be part of a tool that people use.

What was really fun was that it happened just by posting my photo in my Flickr account. The Schmap folks found it there and contacted me. All kinds of amazing connections can be made with the tools we're exploring in Project Play, this is just one example.

To Blog or Not To Blog...

I've been trying to let people sitting next to me during the conference sessions that I'm blogging the session, so they won't think I'm just being rude and checking my email. In a conversation with one lady, I mentioned that MATS members are blogging sessions, so that if you weren't able to attend one in order to go to another you might be able to find a summary and links for the one you missed by checking the WLA blog. Her reply was:

Well, aren't all of the presentations going to be available online? Why do you need to blog it, too?

I responded that, hopefully, the blog entries would fill in some holes by giving more information than is available in someone's handouts or PowerPoint presentation, that it's just another way to share information about the conference for those who couldn't attend or missed a session.

She also said that she assumed people using laptops in sessions were simply being rude, that she thought they were just checking their mail or doing work and ignoring the presenters who had spent a lot of time preparing their information.

So I started thinking.... Do we really need to blog the sessions? Are we adding value to the handouts and slides that will be posted later? Or are we just annoying people by typing too loudly or by looking like we're not paying attention (even though we are).

What do you think? What was your experience at the conference? Are bloggers helping or just being irritating? Share your thoughts in the comments, please!

Blogging tip for conferences

I've been at the WLA conference all week, blogging the sessions I attend, and I've come up with a pet peeve... people who type loudly.

Almost every session I've been in has had a least one person, who I assume is blogging the session which is good, but they type like they're angry at their laptop or something. It's so distracting! I've become particularly aware of how I'm typing and how much noise I'm making, so I won't disturb anyone while I'm doing this.

So, if you ever decide to blog a conference or meeting or something similar, here's a tip: TYPE QUIETLY! Be aware of how much noise you're making while you type and try not to disturb anyone.

Project Play at WLA

About 20 or so of us Project Players gathered at TitleTown Brewing in Green Bay on Wednesday night at the WLA conference. Food was eaten, drinks were drunk, and fun was had by all. We missed those of you who couldn't make it, but, believe me, we ate enough for all of us!

Even techies get the blues

I've been at the WLA conference all week, and one of my responsibilities has been to blog the sessions I attend for the Media & Technology Section of WLA. (My posts are available on the WLA Blog.) Anyway, the first day of the conference was HUGELY frustrating for me, because I was encountering one problem after another, and all of it was technology related in one way or another.

First, I'm in the bathroom, and I can't get any water to come out of the faucet to wash the soap off of my hands. Other people walk right up and make it work, while I go from faucet to faucet with no luck. I know it's a sensor-based system and start waving my soapy hands all over the place, again with no luck. Finally, I see that the sensor is under the mirror in front of me rather than under the faucet spout like other places, and AAAAAAAH! Success at last.

Then I need to connect to the wireless in the convention center. I was happy I brought my light little Mac PowerBook along from home to blog with, but wait! I can't connect! What? Other PC users are getting in just fine? What's wrong with my computer? How am I going to blog the con? I messed around all morning trying to connect with no luck. Finally a friend suggests that the problem is Safari, my browser, so I use her PC to download Firefox and install it on my Mac. Voila! Now the wireless works and I can finally go my merry way. It was a very frustrating experience.

Why am I telling you all this? Because I want you to know that even "techies" get the blues once in a while. We don't know how to troubleshoot everything and run into problems, where we feel out of our element and frustrated and uncomfortable. Ever feel like that in Project Play? Well, you're in good company. So all we can do is... Play more. Learn more. And fear less!

Take my survey

Hiya Project Players! Take my survey about Project Play to let me know how you feel things are going so far. I look forward to seeing the results!

Week 4

Wasn't Stef's podcast for Week 4 great? I thought she did a good job of addressing why we need feedback from our users and how to deal with the negative stuff along the way. I've been moderating comments on the OWLS blogs for a while now, and I must admit, it's not very fun to see all of the porn this and porn that and other disgusting stuff spammers try to get added. But, moderating comments is so easy and quick that it hasn't turned out to be much of a problem in the end. I love it when our librarians add comments on our blogs, and I really love it when the comments lead to a discussion or help us, as system staff, get a better picture of where they are at.

I thought David Lee King's post about inviting participation did a good job of stating why and how. I'm certainly trying to get better at asking for comments on the posts I create, but it's a new way of thinking and writing so it's taking a bit of getting used to. I have learned, however, that if you aren't actively inviting comments, people won't bother. So it's up to you as the blogger to get that feedback stirring! I remember how exciting it was to get the first comment on an OWLS blog - I literally whooped with glee! I know... I'm a dork... It doesn't take much to make me happy, and that's a good thing.

Have you had a comment on your Project Play blog? How did it make you feel? What's the scariest thing about getting feedback at your library? Add your comments!

Week 3

I love the RSS video in this week's Project Play information! I think it does a really good job of explaining a pretty complex concept in simple terms. And I love that they were explaining a techie topic all with paper and a whiteboard! Cool beans.

RSS is one of my favorite topics at the moment. I've been using it to subscribe to blogs in Google Reader for a while now. (I started out in Bloglines, but decided I prefer Google Reader instead.) I recently tweaked the OWLS web sites to pull in feeds from the various OWLS blogs we have created. On the OWLSweb homepage, you can see the feed for our blog Carpe Hootem being pulled in. And on the OWLSnet homepage, you can see feeds for our Network News blog and one for InfoSoup Development. Another pretty intense example is one set up by Evan on the More Read Feeds page on InfoSoup, where we have feeds from lots of different national blogs pulled in to share book reviews and other book news right within the OPAC.

Feeds are a great way to provide instantly updated content on your web site with very little work required on your part. If you're part of an OWLS member library, and you're interested in finding out more about providing feeds on your library's web site, be sure to contact me or Evan.

PP so far

Project Play has had a rocky start from my perspective. We started with the content in a wiki, which proved confusing and frustrating for some. We adjusted this week by moving the site to a blog format hosted on WordPress, then moved again to a locally hosted blog in order to keep our original URL of projectplay.owlsweb.info. I hope all of the hopping around hasn't driven people to distraction! We should at last be in our final resting place, so to speak. I'm hoping for smooth sailing from here on out.

I'm finding it really difficult to back myself up on the topics we're covering. I've been immersed pretty heavily in Web 2.0 stuff for quite a while now, so it's a challenge to pretend I know nothing so that I can try to explain things in simple terms and truly be of help to people playing along with the project. I wish I could travel in the blink of an eye to any participant, to be able to help and encourage and motivate. I really don't want to lose anyone in this process or have anyone feeling like they're getting left behind. Remember, Project Players, to call me if you need any help!