LibraryTechtonics

Meredith Farkas recently asked me to write an article for WebJunction about how libraries can use Flickr, which I was happy to write and gladly submitted last Friday. Then yesterday I was reading Wired.com Monday and came upon this bit:

Flickr Fans to Yahoo: Flick Off!
[Wired.come 29 aug '05]

Wow, some of the Flickr folks are *pissed*. Now granted, it’s never a fun thing when a super keen service needs to submit to the man with the money in order to not only continue to provide wonderful service, but to be able to improve and expand upon the service as it exists. But really, given all the reasons and communications from the Flickreenies about why they did what they did, and remembering my own experience as a dotcommer, I really do see it from their point of view. Honestly, there were much worse things that Flickr could have done. And I don’t anticipate anything getting too crazy, but hey, you never know.

Overall, I do think Yahoo knows it’s onto a really good thing. The merging of accounts is a necessary evil of server housekeeping, and a sign of the true adoption and absorption of the service.

All this after I wrote an article extolling the easy fun of Flickr. I don’t think it’ll become less fun, I think it might just be a little messy and confusing in the transition.

It’ll be interesting to see how the service will change, and whether or not Yahoo will pull a GeoCities in spite of the Flickr crew’s best efforts.

It’s also really interesting to see how users are really tied to the idea of the online persona. I can understand it, I try to get the same screen name everywhere, because it’s my screen name (and, well, it’s easy to remember my screen name if it’s the same everywhere). On the other hand, I see Flickr as a tool, not as an online community venue, while many users see the opportunity to share as a de facto method of creating community, so they want to protect that from the Yahoo! man.

For now I think everything will be OK, outside of the flick_off band of very angry users. I tend to be an optimist who generally likes to watch and see what direction things go in, so I’m not prone to panic in the matters.

I developed the “Geek Out Don’t Freak Out” idea into a class for Reading Public Library as a way to give patrons hands-on help and experience with everyday technologies they own. We all know someone who has a camera phone but doesn’t know how to get the pictures off of it, or someone who has a PDA but doesn’t know the first thing about syncing. Since our library offers a whole host of computer classes that focus on the internet and software technologies, why not go to the next step, especially with mobile technologies that will soon become as ubiquitous and normal as the mobile phone.

Last nights class was on digital cameras, and only had 3 attendees (it was rescheduled due to AC problems in the library, and I didn’t advertise for more sign-ups after the reschedule). It’s actually a good thing that I only had 3 attendees, since we had a lot to cover and still keep it hands-on, although I think a larger group would mean being able to have them work in groups more easily, even with just one instructor.

I brought in my camera, one of the library’s two cameras, and each attendee was to bring in their own camera and the manual. As it turns out, one of the attendees said that he’d never really read the manual before being prompted to hunt it down for the class.
I went over the basic anatomy of a camera, and encouraged people to ask questions and fiddle with their cameras as we went along, which they did. One attendee came to the class because she’s shopping for a camera (she didn’t have one with her, so she got to play with the library camera), so the hands-on playtime was helpful not only in picking one out, but knowing what to look for when she goes to Best Buy to play with the display models.

We didn’t take as many pictures as I would have liked, but this class was helpful to everyone mostly because they just wanted to know their way around their camera. After we played with settings, pushed all sorts of buttons, opened and shut little flap doors, and flipped through manuals, the attendees really had the sense that not matter what digital camera you have, you really can just turn it on, take a picture, and look a your picture or download it. The features were no longer intimidating, they became interesting toys to experiment with.

At the end, the woman shopping for a camera not only had a better sense of what to look for, but also a recommendation to check out the March 2005 issue of Consumer Reports down in Magazines & Newspapers (or, if it was out, the non-circulating copies in the Reference section) for reviews of cameras, image editing software, and printers, while the other two attendees (an older couple that comes to just about all of the classes we offer, I love them) went away with 2 on-shelf book recommendations and call numbers, which I was able to look up on my laptop in the meeting room using the library’s wifi (I also need to look up something for her ILL).

I also came away with ways to make the class better (take more pictures so that the patrons can ask even more questions, have a recommended reading & web site list to hand out). And, best of all, people came to the library, and learned that we do have a clue about technology and their needs.

I’m looking forward to the next GODFO session, which I’ll probably do on camera phones. That’ll be interesting, since I don’t own a camera phone, and don’t intend to, so I’ll need to do some research. Any recommendations on resources?

I found this post today, when it was originally posted to Library Web Chic on June 27. That’s a while ago. I’m not much for memes, as most people know, but I figure since I found it, serendipity dictates that I *must* respond. Besides, Friday is fun day.

Total volume of music on my Toshiba:

A paltry 43MB. I’m slow to rip, and I don’t own an iPod, nor do I have an iTunes account. I also listen to a lot of streaming audio. I do have hordes of MP3s burned to CD, though.

Last CD I bought:

The Beekeeper by Tori Amos and Wreck of a Day by Anna Nallick, preordered in December 2004.

Last song bought on iTunes:

N/A.

Song playing right now:

“Bliss” - Tori Amos, on To Venus and Back.

Five CDs I listen to a lot:

Evenings Pop and Curve - Project Nim. I first heard this group at Columbia University when I was living in NJ and my SO was attending school there. They were born of a friendship at a camp in Louisiana, but only stayed together as a group until about 5 years ago. Like their previous albums are wonderful, and this one is excellent.
Chant - The Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos. I think best when I’m listening to monks chanting, even though I’m not christian. I got through my senior year of college as an English major listening to monks.
Hello - Poe. So very good. “Trigger Happy Jack” got me hooked, but the rest of the album really is priceless.
All of my Garbage CDs. Yep. All of them. In rotation. I wish I could burn them all to one CD and just have them playing in my brain all the time.
Fever In, Fever Out - Luscious Jackson. Apparently, I’ve got a thing for bands that disband. Their final album as a group, Electric Honey, was good, and some of their earlier work was hit or miss, but FIFO was on the money. It’s a great road trip CD.

Five songs that mean a lot to me:

“That Day” - Poe.
“Life in Mono” - Mono.
“Cool As I Am” - Dar Williams.
“Jaan” - Talvin Singh featuring Amar.
“The Perfect Drug” - Nine Inch Nails.

First concert I ever attended:

10,000 Maniacs when they played Middlebury College. I was a frosh at Wes, I think.

Favorite recent find [I added this one in myself]:

They’re Everywhere! - Jim’s Big Ego. My friend Colin gave me this CD, and it’s recklessly awesome. The title track is particularly festive, and I can’t impress enough the real art of Track 6’s “Asshole”. No, really, it’s well written, the entire album is. The whole album is under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Sharealike license, which just makes it’s wicked sweet.

Tag three people:

I don’t know who else has already done this, and since it’s old, I won’t be tagging out. But feel free to pick this up if you want.

I *just* finished Truth & Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett (about 30 minutes ago). It’s a deep, meaningful, moving work, and hearing it on CD with Ann Patchett reading was really amazing. Like Hissy Fit, I came by the audio book listening to a sampler CD I picked up at the PLA President’s reception at ALA. There were only 3 books on the sampler that really caught my ear, and only marginally so. I’m very glad I decided to check both books out.

Honestly, I’d never heard of Ann Patchett before I listened to the sampler, or Lucy Grealy before my copy of the book on CD came in and I read the back cover. I started out listening to the book in the car on the way to and from work (Reading is only 20 minutes from my home, but I find that radio bores me to utter irritation these days, so even just 20 minutes of a book is better than mainstream radio, and somehow NPR always has something really uninteresting on when I’m in the car), and then found myself totally enraptured and engaged enough to bring the CD player into the apartment and keep listening when I got home.

The book made me painfully curious of who these people were, but I restrained myself from actually looking them up, allowing Ann to tell me the story. The way that Ann Patchett reads the book is amazing, at the same time unaffected and deeply entrenched emotionally, but always very natural. So I let the story unfold naturally before me. I waited patiently until after the book was over and done, let the end of the story sink in for a few minutes, then did a quick search on Lucy Grealy in a few different places.

I found a web site that has a long, emotional, and interesting discussion of the relationship between Lucy Grealy and Ann Patchett, as well as arguments over how valid Lucy Grealy’s behavior is in the face of her lifelong trauma. It was too much to take in all at once, and truth be told I gave it a healthy skim (as opposed to a quick glance skim; I’ll likely print it out and give a good once over at some point), but it seemed the big focus was on whether or not Lucy really deserved to be spoiled, or should have been able to get her life together, or how the drugs or cancer was an OK excuse for her way of living. Not to mention how much is in there about Ann being an enabler.

It’s all very interesting, I admit. And I totally see all of these arguments and points as valid applications to the memoir; none is right or wrong, they are all valid perceptions. But really, all I could see, and *envy*, throughout the book was their friendship and love for each other. In truth, people do things for each other that don’t make any sense, that aren’t healthy, that are “by any means necessary” shows of and clings to love, and it is simply human nature, as far as I can see. Ann and Lucy shared a love and a friendship that was through thick and thin, sick and sin, and that came through for me more than the surgeries, the cancer, the fame, the addiction. All of those aspects of the story were so secondary to the friendship in my reading (or, rather, listening) of the book.

One thing I never did was cry while listening to the book. That seems to come up a lot with other people who have read anything by Ann Patchett that mentions Lucy Grealy. I’m not much of a cryer, really, when it comes to books or movies. It’s not a matter of whether or not I’m moved; this was a *very* moving book, it spoke to me in many ways, and I deeply felt a great many things. I don’t supress the need to cry, either. Overall, I see myself as an observer of human nature, and I feel what applies to me, and I empathize. Somehow, that rarely translates to crying, but I can see how this book could be a Kleenex-puller.

I s’pose this isn’t so much a book review as a book reflection and writer recommendation. Ann Patchett’s writing is brilliant, which can easily be seen even in the listening, and I’ll definitely look for more of her books. I’ll even track down Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy, and perhaps some of her poetry, because Ann speaks so highly of Lucy’s ability to write.

Also, this book motivates in me the desire to *write*. While blogging is a form of writing and publishing, it’s not the same, necessarily, as writing writing. It’s hard to clarify and explain this without offending some bloggers’ sensibilities, and believe me, I don’t mean to offend. Most blog readers expect short snippets, or longish-but-digestible bits (which is my general style, I think), of writing on a blog. These types of posts are often part of what makes a blog a blog, especially in presentations about what makes a blog. This book makes me think of my life in the narrative even with my inner dialogue, and in doing so, makes me think that I am a good writer, that I have clever and interesting things to say, and that I really should say them more often. Perhaps I can hybridize narrative and snippets a bit better, and serve my storytelling need a bit more while still keeping to blog “standards” of length, then save longer bits for a book of my own someday.

It also makes whether or not I’m being read very blatently the focus, rather than whether or not I’m being linked to or mentioned often. I like that very much. I think it’s part of what I’ve been looking for.

I was quite pleased to announce that my library now has a Flickr account, and that everyone on staff seems pretty stoked about it.

As with any locally disruptive technology, the introduction comes with it’s own interesting dialog and loosely benign knots to untangle. When I gave my presentation to the reference staff, director, assistant director, and library admin assistant on what Flickr is, how it works, and what we could do with it, the presentation was interspersed with interesting questions and issues. I wanted to really talk about it all, but I also needed to get through the presentation, as I had a time limit to work within, but I’m encouraging the discussion of these bits:

• People, pictures, and names. We offer a great deal of programming, especially for children and teens (there’s also a good deal of programming for adults and older adults, just not *as* much). The question arose of how we deal with permission to post photos, and names with photos. Someone posited that at the schools in town, they have kids and parents sign permission slips just to take the photos. Will it be OK to post the photos without names without official permission? Does it really just depend on our community? As readers, do any of you work for libraries with these policies? I’d love to hear from you.

  For now, we figure that we can mark questionable photos private, and then make them public as we get permission, just so that we can get the pictures off the camera and placed in an appropriate set. We can also add patrons who have Flickr accounts as Contacts who are Friends, and use the privacy settings to share them that way, as well.

• Wait, where did we put them? The nice thing about using Flickr is that it’s a quick, easy, yet robust way to centrally organize photos (nevermind the fun and madness of tagging, metadata, sharing with badges, and comments). Even though we can upload the photos in their native size, and let Flickr resize them for us, the issue arose that it would be good to also store our originals locally (we’re librarians, it’s what we do). Our library doesn’t currently have a file server, and it’s one of the things that’s been on my wish list since I started, so this is the perfect impetus to really get that rolling. We haven’t had much trickle of hardware in the recent massive shift of old to new computers, but there may be one or two candidate machines that could be set up as a local file server. Sweet.
• Um, can I delete these? When I originally ordered the accessories for the camera, I ordered one 256MB memory card (to add to the 16MB of memory internal to the camera), but no card reader, since I figured the USB cable was sufficient, and why have extra hardware lying around. However, our YA librarians had the excellent idea of buying a memory card and reader for each department, so that each department could be responsible for their pictures. The idea was very well received, which is awesome. It will encourage departments to download their photos right away, instead of allowing them to languish on the camera indefinitely, and will alleviate the problem of wondering whether or not to delete photos on the camera to free up space. The only underlying issue is budget, so we’ll see how it goes.
• Metadata madness. We might want to come up with a system to standardize our tagging just a smidgen. Since we’re looking at 10 people at minimum with upload access to one account, we’ll want to make sure we’re all speaking the same tagging and metadata language. So very librarianesque! Coming up with simple guidelines on tags, title and description policies, and our copyright license notation shouldn’t be hard, it just needs to be done. I’m sure it’ll evolve over time as we use the service, and luckily I work in a library where everyone is flexible with growth and change.
Collection development policy? I’m guessing it wouldn’t hurt. Especially since we discussed the idea of using Flickr sets for archive photo collections, or just online collection-type stuff. It also occured to me later that we might want to have some policy that states that we only upload photos from programs, or that we take, or something, or not, depending on how we want to control contributions to the collection. Besides, a little CYA never hurt.

That’s all I can remember from the meeting for now. I’m sure as things progress I’ll have more to talk about. I’m thinking about putting together a bulletin board for the library to talk about these sorts of things. We all seem to live in our email as an organization, and I’m not sure how well a bulletin board would fair given our current habits, but it wouldn’t hurt to pitch the idea.