Here’s Osama bin Laden with an eye patch.
In case you were wondering, this is a fake photo.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/05/03/bin.laden.fake.photo/index.html?hpt=T1

First, by John Hillcoat, the film’s director:
“‘When they pass through a city, there’s a shot of two ships sitting on a freeway that looks like a visual effect. That is an actual IMAX 70mm shot taken days after Katrina. We had to doctor the image, grunge it up, make it more toxic, set it into our world, but these places were not hard to find. There’s a fair amount of devastation already in the American landscape’” (p. 90-91).

The second, by the article’s writer, Tom Chiarella:
“The terror of it [the film] is in a normal world made vacant. There is a surprising terror in a landscape of farmhouses full of possessions that have no function, a remarkable danger in a pile of old hammers, in the possibility of forgetting what things were once for. It’s a fear worth feeling. And there is something knotty and resilient, eternal and elemental, something worth caring about in all this, in a parent’s love for a child, especially when love is the only thing left in the world that has the least little thread of purpose” (p. 91).

I read “The Road” a couple of months ago, and it was quite honestly the fastest I’ve ever read a book. True, it isn’t too long, and the writing style is short and quick. But I also couldn’t put it down. It was depressing and beautiful, filled with both love and aching. I really felt that these quotes really captured the same feeling I had while reading the book. It definitely made me want to read more of McCarthy’s works.

However, before I continue waxing poetic about a book I read a couple of months ago, I’ll save all of that fodder for a post-review of the movie which comes out in approximately one week. Until then, here’s a link to the film’s website: http://www.theroad-movie.com/.

All quotes from:
Chiarella, T. (2009). The most important film of the year. Esquire, 151(6), 86-91.

For this assignment, my initial plan was to examine what research tools and online technologies a larger public library was utilizing as part of their online services. I decided to look at the website of the largest public library in Utah, the Salt Lake City Public Library (http://www.slcpl.lib.ut.us/index.jsp). The beautiful main branch was built about six years ago and is located in the heart of Salt Lake City, just across the street from City Hall. The building’s six stories house nearly 500,000 materials, 163 computers, various shops, and even a roof-top garden. So what online reference services do they offer? Email. Yup, that’s about it. Of course, they do provide a phone number that patrons can call, and they also have an email list sign-up for various departments within the library. But that is really the extent of their online reference services. To be honest, I was very surprised by the lack of services, and felt that their web presence was rather anticlimactic. I’d assumed that they would provide instant messaging, or online video tutorials to assist patrons, even just a library blog. But alas, they didn’t have any of these things.

So, I decided I needed to look at another library to be able to sufficiently fulfill this assignment. This time, I decided to research the Brigham City Library, a library that I knew was using web technologies. Ironically, the Brigham City Library is a lot smaller than the Salt Lake City Public Library; for example, the population of Brigham City is just over 20,000, and Salt Lake City’s population is around 180,000. Just as the differences between the two cities are many, so are the differences between the online presences of each of the libraries.

The first thing one might notice on the Brigham City Library’s home page (http://bcpl.lib.ut.us/) is a Picassa web album that highlights a couple aspects of the library’s collection. For example, it shows how to access a few of the library’s databases, what the month’s reading discussion topic is, when and where the knitting group and writing group meet, how to download eBooks, and even how to join their online book club.

Another technology placed prominently on the home page is the Meebo chat application that lets patrons talk to the reference librarian one-on-one. This tool is one of the quickest and most direct methods to get online reference help. When I asked one of the librarians how long they’d been using it and how many reference transactions they completed typically in a week, and they told me that they’d only recently began using it, and that I was one of the first patrons to ask them a question with it. I’m sure that with time many more patrons will use the Meebo chat to communicate with the staff at the library, and I really commended them on making that service available.

The main tabs on their home page direct patrons to their online catalog, their Research Center, and a listing of all of the programs that they offer. Under the Research Center tab, they list links to some of the databases they provide access to, such as NetLibrary and Pioneer, as well as their catalog of eBooks and a Google Custom search box. Another web 2.0 technology that they feature is Delicious; they provide a word cloud of various research topics with links to certain sites that the librarian thinks patrons will find useful.

One interesting thing that I found on their website is that they offer both a print newsletter, with an image of it posted online, as well as an online blog. I felt that this really showed an equal interest among their patrons that are tech-savvy and those that aren’t as comfortable with online services. Their library blog (http://brighamcitylibrary.blogspot.com/) is one of the highlights of their online presence. Aside from the posts, which are consistently frequent, they also have a video tutorial, a link to their Delicious account, a list of book suggestions from their LibraryThing account, and even a ClustrMap that shows where their visitors have come from. They use Blogger for their blog account, and looking at their archives shows that they usually write over ten entries each month.

The most fun web technology that they use on their website are their podcasts. They’ve only got three posted so far, but it’s great to listen to them and see how creative they try to make them. The three podcasts they have as of now highlight their annual book sale, the Summer Reading program, and an exhibit on Lewis and Clark. I’m not sure how many of the patrons actually listen to them, but I was just impressed that the librarians were even using the technology, and it was obvious that they were having fun too.

Ultimately, I think that the Brigham City Library is doing a wonderful job by creating such a vibrant and interactive web presence. While they might be a small library with limited resources, they definitely take advantage of these online applications and show that even a library of their size can be just as technological as, say, the Salt Lake City Library should be.

However, I do feel that blogs are really the perfect medium for a library to create a static, subscribeable web-presence to update, highlight, and expound.  I found a couple of really good examples of libraries that use blogs;http://brighamcitylibrary.blogspot.com/ and http://library.usu.edu/blog/ are blogs by two libraries that I’ve worked in.  I love these examples because of the layouts they have and all of the information that they make available in them.  Both blogs highlight features in their collections, both are updated rather regularly, and both employ widgets that create an immersive and engaging page.  I especially love the Brigham City Library’s blog because they are such a small library, yet they really take advantage of their blog and its abilities.  They illustrate how a smaller library, even a branch library, can adapt technologies and use these programs to create a strong online presence, especially when it comes at a relatively low-cost.  All that’s needed is the knowhow.  I mentioned this in class, but the comparisons are staggering when looking at the Salt Lake City public library’s website.  The only online, virtual presence they have is their site, and the only reference help they offer online is email (kind of anticlimactic if you ask me).

Even though our class has ended, I think I will probably continue this blog; it gives me an environment to wax poetic and write about things about school, work, and life.  Plus, it’ll be important for me to keep my web 2.0 skills sharp since I’ll be starting the post-graduation job hunt soon.  And I’ve enjoyed using WordPress for the most part; my only gripe is that they charge if you want to customize the html coding on your blog.  But, the fee is relatively small, and it would be nice to be able to have an html sandbox to play around in.  The account I have now really limits what I’m able to do with the html, and I’d like to be able to work more at creating meshup types of features in my blog.

Ultimately, I feel that it’s important for libraries to have a strong web-presence.  Libraries need to be in tune with current and future technological trends in order to serve their patrons.  But I also definitely feel that their presence should be simple, effective, and professional.  Blogs are the best way to compliment a library’s home page, and I hope that more libraries take advantage of them.

I’ll end with one of my favorite Billy Joel songs, Say Goodbye to Hollywood, as a farewell to my fellow classmates and teacher.

Based on my experience so far, there are many free programs available online that help users develop screen casts.  In class, we were shown Jing, which is available for free but also is available in a cost-version with more features.  With the program, I’ve been able to create a couple of screen casts of my own.  Once a screen cast has been created, the user has the option of directing other users to it with a URL, an embedded link, or the actual screen cast embeded in a webpage.  Because of the simplicity of the program and the screen casts, typically the best method to share them are by embedding the actual video on a page, however its important to keep the graphics in the screen casts simple (the free version doesn’t like videos with a lot of graphic movemnts).

Because technology has become such a central part of our lives today, the information libraries present should be streamlined to fit into this digital world.  For this same reason I love seeing libraries use technologies like screen casts and instant messaging.  And screen casts are effective for practically every type of audience for a couple of reasons.  First, they’re adaptable.  It’s easy to create the same screen cast in multiple languages, or update screen casts when the information they contain is outdated.  Second, they are simple to use.  When embedded in a page, the user simply clicks the play button and the video starts right off.  This simplicity makes screen casts effective and efficient.  And by streamlining them into the library’s webpages, they attract the attention of the patrons.

For this assignment, I use an example of a screen cast showing patrons how to renew their materials online.  The screen cast could be embedded in a frequently-asked section, in the circulation department’s home page, or in the library’s help pages.  The video will begin by showing the library’s home page, highlighting the URL in case they don’t know how to get there,  and directing patrons to the link that will take them to IUCat.  In the next screen, the video will highlight the link that says “Log in for Request Delivery and off-campus access to resources” and direct them to click that link.  Then the video will direct the users to click the login icon and sign into their accounts using their username and passphrase (to maintain security and anonymity, it would be wise to create an account that isn’t attached to an actual person).  They would then be guided to the “My Account” link where they could either review their account or renew the materials they have checked out.  After showing them how to actually renew their books, it would be important to show them where the new due-date is given, and then remind them to log out of their accounts when they are finished.  And that would be the end of my screen cast.

Example:

http://www.screencast.com/t/MKwIWeP74

I’m still trying to figure out a couple of things, like how to make it not so darned big, but I do like Jing. It’ll be fun to play with it some more.

After having a frustrating time in class with the mashup, I finally got things sorted out and on their way (thanks to Amanda and Patrick!  Has it really been that long since 401?).  Today, I was able to add the link to my blog, incorporate a preview and link to my Delicious account, and edit a few other mistakes that I found (i.e. it’s ‘mashup’ and not ‘meshup’).

Here’s my mashup so far…http://ella.slis.indiana.edu/~benmjohn/meshup.html

Now, I’m just trying to figure out what two other toys I can throw into my mashup.  I’d like to include things that show my interests, such as architecture or astronomy.  But I haven’t been able to decide on what things to include and how to include them.  I guess that is the only problem I’m having right now.

And here’s a link to my test to see if my Jing screencast works…
http://www.screencast.com/t/5COSpnB94Q
(I can’t figure out how to embed the video directly into my blog. Any ideas?)

I decided to look at Delicious and Stumble Upon, but I should stress that I tried to avoid doing a comparison between the two, because after using them more I discovered that they are actually rather different tools.  Where Delicious is used as an organizer of one’s bookmarks, Stumble Upon is more of a discovery and searching tool.  However, both incorporate social tagging, so that is one area where comparisons are warranted.

As I stated before, Stumble Upon is pretty much what its title infers; it is used to stumble upon sites by searching under specific tags.  For example, I started with the tag “astronomy” and Stumble Upon directed me to a site called Wikisky, which was actually pretty interesting.  Then, it asked me if I liked that site and would like to see more similar to that one, or if I didn’t like and wanted to see something else.  All of the “liked” sites are organized together in a favorites page.  Delicious has a similar feature on their site that is directed by social tagging, and not surprisingly, many of the same sites that I saw in Stumble Upon I also saw in my Delicious search.

When I do a search for the tag ‘architecture’ in both sites, I also get very different results.  Stumble Upon doesn’t list the results in any specific order that I could distinguish, but it does allow the list to be sorted by the average rating of the site or the number of reviews it has received.  There is also an option to limit the results by adding another tag filter to the search.  Delicious sorts the result list by the most recent ones that had been bookmarked.  It also shows all of the tags applied to a site and how many Delicious users have bookmarked that site.  By simply clicking one of the other tags, you can filter your result list.  There’s even an option next to each URL that will let you save a specific site in your own Delicious account.

Another tag search that I conducted within each site was with the tag ‘silent films.’  The content of the results in both Delicious and Stumble Upon showed no overlap at all, and of the two I felt that Delicious definitely had the more relevant results.  But this makes sense because Delicious lists the results in order of those that have been bookmarked most recently; I’m still not sure how Stumble Upon gathers its results.  For example, one of the first results in Delicious was the site SilentEra.com, a site that I use regularly when inquiring about silent cinema.  Stumble Upon didn’t list that site until I got to the fifth page of the results.

Because I can do so much more with Delicious, such as save any page I wish to save, I will definitely continue to use it instead of Stumble Upon.  While Stumble Upon is a helpful way to find other sites within a similar topic, I can do the same thing in Delicious.  As such, I don’t have much need for Stumble Upon.  And the social tagging feature is interesting and somewhat useful; I’ll probably use that more in the future.  It is interesting to see how people have tagged certain pages, and the tags are nice when I’m just meandering around the world wide web looking for fun sites to visit.  But overall I use Delicious to store my bookmarks rather than to find new ones.