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I crowdsourced this week’s post. I asked (via Twitter/Facebook) library staff to tell me what their favorite technology is, and why. Here’s most of what I got:
- “I’m digging on Excel right now because I love turning lots of numbers into interesting little stories.”
- “My favorite thing ever may be how my iPhone gives me the Internet all the time, including Google Maps.”
- “Flickr cause I love sharing and viewing photos & it helps me recognize my online friends when I meet them in person.”
- “Plain simple email because I can carry on conversations of significant depth and over time.”
- “The book. Still the most useful and efficient container for lengthy, complex and thought-filled content.”
- “GPS. Truly the one thing I can’t imagine living without anymore.”
- “I love getting stats on # of clicks in tweets from bit.ly, and scheduling tweets using socialoomph (or hootsuite).”
- “Cassie time/print management software. Simple, low cost, works very well.”
- “The book and Twitter.”
- “Google Reader. It’s the closest thing I’ve seen to downloading info directly into your brain, a la “The Matrix.” If I get a chance to check my feeds every day, chances are that I have at least a vague idea of what my patron/colleague/friends are talking about in current events.”
- “Usually used in the smaller libraries, I like DeepFreeze for very easy PC lockdown.”
- “VMWare or Virtual Box and LogMeIn. Our web server is a virtualized machine, I can take a copy, run it on my desktop and test updates or whatever I want to try without worry. LogMeIn lets me log onto my desktop from home.”
- “PC Anywhere. We use it to connect to any staff machine.”
- “My Blackberry. I can do so much with it and the one I have has wifi so I can check our wifi connections easier than I can with a laptop computer.”
- “Open source: Drupal, Gimp, Inkscape…”
- “Digital cameras. I had a Kodak Brownie when I was a kid and thought I was hot stuff (Now you know how ancient I am). I love not having to go to the drugstore and pay for prints.”
- “My Crackberry…I mean Blackberry. I can access email, Google, Facebook, Twitter and much more. I almost don’t need an actual computer.”
The answers I received were a good combination from both line staff librarians and library techs. Some of the answers surprised me; Some of the techs loved some relatively low-tech things, and vice-versa.
What does this mean to me, Laura?
- Obviously, technology was defined by the crowd in different ways. I purposely left the parameters broad, and you can see the scope of what came back. Answers ranged from the book to complex virtualization software, with all sorts of interesting things in between. This is just a sampling of what might come back if we were to ask our library patrons what their favorite technology is. Have you asked? This might be a good question to pose via your library Facebook page or even through a simple paper-and-box voting system. Engage your patrons! The answers might surprise you.
- What could you do with those answers? People are fascinated with how others answer polls (we always like to see how others responded/rated/reviewed; thusly, the success of the Amazon model). Post the results online and in your library. Make a cool infographic or a Wordle that you can display to your patrons. Set up a book/materials display around the results. Link to related books or pathfinders on your web site. Advertise upcoming programs on technology-related topics.
- Does engaging your patrons have to use technology topics? Of course not. This example, however, hopefully demonstrates how you can use crowdsourcing to more fully interact with patrons. After all, one of our goals as librarians is to connect people to the information that interests them. Find out what interests them (and everyone else in your community) and connect them! Polling and then doing interesting things so that polled patrons can interact with the results is a simple way to show your community that you care what they think and want to support their interests.
How else could you crowdsource and engage?
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This week I’m chatting about a web application called Glue . I look at a good number of web applications, and some are useful. Unfortunately, Glue is not one of those.
The premise of Glue is that it “shows you things that you’ll like based on your personal tastes, what your friends like, and what’s most popular on Glue.” In essence, it’s a browser add-on that will allow you to rate certain kinds of things online and to share those likes/dislikes with people who subscribe (same as friend/follow) you.
I started experimenting with Glue several months ago as a beta participant. However, I soon gave up on it for a variety of reasons (which I’ll detail in a bit). Glue was released fully this month, and I decided to give it another go. Alas, I was disappointed–again. Here’s why:
- Glue is a browser add-on, which means you have to add it to every browser on every computer that you might use for surfing.
- It does not support every site on the net that might have books, movies, electronics, etc. I found that Glue worked fine with Amazon, but did not support Thinkgeek. The limited number of places on the web where Glue works was a deterrent for me.
- I wasn’t really sure what problem Glue was trying to solve. I believe it was using the idea that referencing your friends’ tastes would be useful when picking out items, but in practice it didn’t bear out. The issue comes down to critical mass; Glue doesn’t have it (at least, not yet). Only 9 of my “friends” were on Glue, and none of us necessarily have compatible tastes. The reality is that Glue, to work well, would likely need a community the size of Facebook to make it really useful.
Some of my other comments about this app:
- You can earn virtual “stickers” by continuing to favorite items. These icons show up on your Glue profile. However, some stickers showed up on mine with no real explanation of what they were or how I earned them. Additionally, marking just 10 movies gave me a sticker called “Movie Buff.” Really?
- If you spend enough time using Glue, you can eventually become a “Guru.” There is only one of these per category, so you will likely have to fight it out with other Glue users for the title.
- The idea that Glue was tracking what I was looking at and publicizing it made me a tad nervous. The app does give you the ability to manually delete items from your profile, but that assumes you’ll remember to do that. Granted, I’m not surfing porn, but what if I wasn’t looking to advertise my Betsy-Tacy habit?
What does this mean to me, Laura?
- Glue does not have the critical mass in users or supported sites to make this a truly useful application. Lack of community is a real issue.
- A library could theoretically make use of this for readers advisory services but, frankly, expecting users to have to install a browser plug-in to follow the library is unrealistic.
- Overall, this app has a long ways to go, if it ever gets there.
Recently, a frustrated librarian contacted me because she wanted to discuss a situation that had occurred at her library. After hearing her story, I asked her permission to recount it here (and to keep identifying details confidential).
In essence, here is her sad tale:
Her library had a MySpace account. The librarian friended anyone who wanted to be MySpace friends, believing that the library is accessible to all. It later turned out that some of the friends had some questionable content on their profiles. The administration reacted by severely criticizing the librarian and shutting down the MySpace account.
Here’s my take on this:
- Why is the library “screening” patrons at its virtual door when no library does it at its physical one? Why is the library’s presence online only open to some and not all?
- Regardless of what is on someone’s profile, that reflects on that person, not necessarily on the connecting friends. Unless the profile is somehow directly harming the library’s reputation, I just can’t see this argument. I refuse to take responsibility for every silly picture or irresponsible thing that my friends do online. Why should a library?
- Part of the administration’s overreaction was likely due to a misconception about how to approach social media. Traditional marketing and reputation management are not applicable. Libraries need to understand that successful social media has a human tone; market-speak and incessant self-promotion are a quick route to epic fail. Being human means having human friends, not necessarily paragons of what we want our patrons to be.
- If one of these “questionable” MySpace friends came to the library in person, would the library refuse to help them?
Libraries need their patrons. We don’t judge their information needs; why do we judge their lives outside of libraries?
It’s a pain, but security is each user’s responsibility, not just the tech’s.–Bobbi Galvin, OPLIN
One of the most common misconceptions library staff typically have about their email accounts is that nobody would want to hack them.
WRONG.
Your email account is an extremely valuable commodity, especially to a spammer. Check these stats out:
- The average PC user receives over 2,000 and counting spammed emails per year
- The average computer user receives about 10 spams per day
- About 28% of people answer spam emails
- About 90 BILLION spam mails are sent PER DAY
Spam is big business, and your email account is a potential accessory. The problem lies in that library staff tend to think hackers want the actual emails in the account, when rather what they are likely after is the account access. Spammers want to use your account to send spam.
What does this mean to me, Laura?
A few things. For instance, if your account is hacked, other problems can arise:
- Your account can be blacklisted or blocked because of spamming;
- The entire OPLIN mailserver IP can be blocked, because that’s where the spam is coming from;
- If your email account is blocked/blacklisted, your mail doesn’t get delivered;
- Your friends/families/coworkers/professional contacts start getting Viagra ads from your address. Not good.
So what should I do?
- Start by using a strong password. Try http://www.passwordmeter.com to check if it’s strong enough.
- Change your password often. Yes, it’s a pain. Do it anyway.
- Make sure that your computer is protected. This means making sure you take care (or your tech takes care) of doing Microsoft updates in a timely manner and keeping your anti-virus software updated. New viruses come out every day; is your virus software checking for new virus definitions frequently?
Email security is part of network security, and everyone is responsible for the health of the network. Time for a check up!
