So You Wanna Be My Friend?
Good! Friends are nice. I like them. I must admit, Meredith blogged about this a while back, I think, and I thought, “hmm… is it really that much of a problem?” The answer is: Yes, it is.
So here’s the deal. Facebook and MySpace… if I know you, and you friend me, and I don’t utterly loathe you, I’ll accept. See, I’m nice. However, if I have NO idea who you are, then I apologize. I don’t accept friendship from complete strangers. Now, your question may be, “I want to be your friend! How can I facilitate this endeavor. The answer is simple: talk to me first… preferably more than once, and I will be happy to be your friend.
If I know you from Second Life, and you friend me, umm…. you need to tell me who you are! I’ve gotten several friendship requests on various social networking sites, and I’m not sure if you’re someone I know from SL or not. Please? I don’t to hurt your feelings if you’re one of my bestest SL friends, who just happened to have never mentioned your RL name to me.
Speaking of SL. If you friend me in SL because you know me in RL, PLEASE send me and IM and tell me who you are. No matter how much I pick at my psychic abilities, I can’t figure out who Chonnie Masala is.
In the words of Ang, I’m nice, but I’m not friendly.
Library Camp 2008
Well, here I am at library camp at AADL. Library camp is fun.
MORNING SESSIONS
Session One: DRUPAL
The first session, right now is on Drupal. AADL has the mother of Drupal stuff, and that is a quote.
These are some drupal resources.
Drupal is very cool and very neat. Talking about Drupal is very boring.
Eli and John Blyberg are here. They are nice boys. Sorry about my nutty posting today… after this week. I think my brain is fried.
Session Two: ILS
Hopefully, this is going to be fun.
One person asked “What are going to do if WorldCat takes over ILSs. Eli says he thinks that OCLC is in as much peril as Innovative or sirsi. “We want to be in control of the interfaces that we show our patrons.”
Library Thing is giving away the ISBN resolver, and OCLC wants you to pay for it.
Steve Bowers explained the difference between an ILS and an OPAC. OCLC isn’t creating an ILS…so he isn’t afraid of OCLC taking over. Some libraries only need the OPAC, however.
Open source tends to be more patron centered, and my force tech services to do a few extra clicks, and they need to deal. 
Bad patron interfaces are explained away by librarians who say “they just need training”
“Bad user interfaces make smart people look dumb. Good user interfaces make dumb people look smart.”
ILS talk are very very … intense and almost emotional.
Steve Bowers got happy faces for his cool OPAC stuff, and then they asked what ILS he was using, and when it was discovered that he used Horizon… it was fun to watch the faces change.
Steve was talking about embedding videos, etc. into their pages. See, this is why Steve is a Mover & Shaker.
Session Three:Â Library 2.0 in a 1.0 world
What’s the point of Twitter
·        You can disburse messages to a group of people… like new acquisitions, etc.
RSS, Blogs, etc.
Having a public website is like having a public bathroom. Sooner or later, someone is going to crap on the floor. You don’t have to have elaborate policies, etc. When there is a turd on the floor, someone will let you know. Almost everyone online newspaper has an online forum.  It’s part of being a public entity.
It’s not about selling administration on the technologies, but on the package, on the package of things to interact and make things better for the public.
Library staff don’t necessarily have a vision of what they will be doing, if, for example, patrons are adding flickr, or OCLC eats everyone’s OPAC. They don’t know what their contribution is then.
The Skokie ten is a really good digestion of the 23 things of library 2.0
The number of comments on a blog is not indicative of its success.
You have to try out these new technologies, and then give them time… there will not be immediate success.
More to come…
Hi All!
I’m a bad blogger. There. I admit it. When things get crazy, everything else just disappears.
Tomorrow, I’m doing a talk on Second Life for MDMLG. Carol Perryman is helping by doing a tour remotely in-world and using Skype.
Yesterday, my org held a really cool special program yesterday, Teaching Technology in Libraries. Our keynote was Jessamyn West, and she was great, of course, as usual. After the talk, we went out to dinner with Ang, Kevin, Sonya and Jessamyn’s friend, Susan (I hope!) to the Traveler’s Club.
Thursday, I’m heading off to Library Camp, which should be super cool. A lot of fun people are coming. It’s free, it’s fun, and if you’re in town, YOU SHOULD COME!!!
Well, I should get back to writing the talk…I’m such a procrastinator!!!
Ok ok ok…fine…I’ll tell you about this too.