Bitter is a four (wait...six) letter word

I started to read this article about Timothy Ferriss, author of The four hour work week, with a hope that it would teach me about unplugging from technology to make me a more productive person, both personally and professionally.

What I ended up with was a bitter taste in my mouth.

Ferriss doesn't unplug from technology. He pays someone else to plug in for him.

Maybe he doesn't use MySpace or Ning or Twitter, but he still receives correspondence electronically. Only he has personal assistants who sift through his messages and only send him the important ones.

I don't know why this article bugs me so much, but it does. I think it's because it makes technology out to be the enemy.

Technology is not, in my opinion, the enemy. We allow ourselves (myself included) to get overloaded by the presentation of too much information. And maybe this is the point that the article was trying to make: be selective with what information you allow into your world. But I thought it missed the mark.

Back to school with iTunes U

iTunes U is an interesting example of "being where your users are."

According to the iTunes U website, "more than half of the nation’s top 500 schools use it to distribute their digital content to students — or to the world."

This is fantastic, because it allows faculty to post digital content for their students (or anyone with an interest, for that matter) to download and listen to on their own time.

When I was in college, I took a psychology class where the professor's lectures were incredibly dense. It was a joy to be in his class because I learned so much, but I often walked out knowing that I hadn't written down every. last. detail. It was a shame, as some of the minutia from his lectures is what made it onto his exams.

In that class, some of my fellow students bought tape recorders. It helped them to record the professor's lectures and then listen to them again later.

iTunes U seems to be the natural extension of the idea of tape recording lectures.

It's even better than that, though, because you don't have to be a student of that university (or any university for that matter) to download a lecture. So, anyone with a computer and some interest can learn anything.

So where do libraries it into this equation?

Are you an academic library at an institution that puts content on iTunes U? If so, are you pimping iTunes U on your library's website or at the help desk?

Are you a public library? Are you advertising the content on iTunes U to your users in the relevant areas of your collection?

I don't necessarily advocate giving free advertising to a business, and iTunes is a business.

But the iTunes U content is freely available to anyone with the means to download it, so I guess, to me, it's different.

I am curious to spend more time with iTunes U and see what there is for me to learn.

Art history? Physics? Literature?

So much content, so little time.

--Erin

Teaching moments

I was in Upstate New York this weekend attending a memorial service for a member of my husband's family. On Sunday morning, the extended family was sitting around the breakfast table reading the Sunday comics.

My husband hands me the comics because of this and says "You'll think this is funny. You're the only person I've ever heard say the word 'folksonomies.'"

I read the strip and laughed quite a bit.

The rest of the people at the table looked at me expectantly.

I spent the next 15 minutes explaining folksonomies, tagging, and controlled vocabulary.

What's better, at the end of the 15 minutes, the people at the table weren't looking at me glassy eyed.

I was reminded that I can have a hand in turning people on to libraries even when I'm not at work. A discussion over the Sunday comics can be a way to open people up to what the library does (and can potentially do) for them.

Being where the users are

I got a link to LibGuides today.

It seems like a great way for school and academic librarians to connect with their users. You can imbed videos, chat boxes, and RSS feeds into your Widgets. You can link to things in your library catalog on your Widget.

And best of all? You can publish your Widget in Facebook so that your students can find you.

It's tagline is "Web 2.0 for Library 2.0."

Fabulous, right?

It is if your users will use it. If not, it's just another waste of your time and resources.

Facebook users have to go into "applications" and search for LibGuides. Then they have to add the application to their page. Then they have to hope that their school has created content for them to link to. I know all of this because I did it myself.

I think that LibGuides has great potential. I think that if libraries use it that it is a great example of being where the users are.

My question, though, is how do you let users know that this application exists? In other words, if you build it, you have to tell them it's there before they will come.

This isn't to suggest that we through the application out completely and continue our Luddite-ian ways. It's just to say that your front-line staff has to be out there connecting with users in the first place if you want this to work.

"Go where your users are." It's a huge hallmark of the Library 2.0 philosophy. I think the unspoken corollary is that you have to find a way to let users know you're there. Does your library have subject guides or a blog linked directly off of the main web page? Do your librarians have a web presence and is that web presence known by their constituency? Are you spending face time with the people you serve so they want to find you online?

All of the technology and all of the "be where uses are" doesn't make any difference if your users:
A)Don't know
B)Don't care

Don't just be where your users are--be relevant in the lives of your users. Engage them and present a likable front. Make them want to spend more time with you.

Then if you build it they will come.

Zotero @ your library?

I have heard the buzz about Zotero by osmosis, but have never actually had cause to investigate it. I was reading something about a new release of the software, and decided to use that opportunity to check it out.

Wowza!

It seems like you couldn't possibly ask for more from citation software. It's open source. It's compatible with Microsoft Office and Open Office. It allows users to export citations in style-specific formats. It allows users to tag citations for specific projects. And it runs through your web browser (assuming your Web Browser is Firefox).

I wondered immediately whether librarians in my library are telling our students about Zotero when they ask for help with finding articles or citing sources. It seems like this would be the perfect way for a student to house citations for various assignments they're working on.

If you were doing research in a database for a paper for your English class, you could (theoretically) grab the citation before you printed the article and, when the time came for you to document your sources, grab all of the citations marked "English 101" and document them in the style your professor preferred.

I haven't played with it much, though, so I'm not sure about its limitations. It may not be the best citation software out there.

I do hope, though, that librarians who are "in the know" about this type of technology are sharing it with their colleagues and their users.