Ballad in Plain E

As noted on Slaw, Google’s introduced “teleportation” - the poor man’s site: syntax shortcut.

Best of all, it works for the Government of BC website, which is notoriously hard to search using its own site search engine.

Just type “gov bc” into Google and you’ll see the little site search box below the first hit’s URL, intro text, and “refine your search” options. You get the same results whether you use the teleportation box or just do a straight up site: syntax search with a search term.

(As seen on Library Revolution)

This test will determine what level of education is required to understand your blog. I wish there were some information on how the reading level is determined, though.

At lunchtime, the elevator news informed me that YouTube has just unveiled a Canadian version, youtube.ca.

In response, the Ingram 2.0 column on the Globe & Mail website asks the question, “Do we really need a YouTube Canada?” Ingram says no, that funny is funny, and therefore the localisation of YouTube is pointless and probably just an advertising play.

According to another article from the Globe, “YouTube believes that by creating country-specific sites, users will have an easier time finding the relevant videos they are looking for. ”

YouTube says they won’t be doing IP redirecting to automatically take Canadian visitors to the .ca domain unless they thought it would make for “a better user experience.” To which Rob Hyndman of Toronto (THE Rob Hyndman?) commented: “ It strikes me as a little troubling that Youtube thinks that depriving me of choice could ever result in ‘a better user experience’.”

Touché!

This morning I read about an online survey that Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan is sponsoring, on extending the Skytrain Millennium Line out to UBC (um, awesome). Whilst looking for it online, I stumbled across the news that Google Transit is now available for metro Vancouver.

If you live in Vancouver or the Lower Mainland, you will probably find both of items of interest. Your mission for this morning: go take the online survey at Sam Sullivan’s website (you can vote on how far the Millennium line should be extended, whether the line should be above or below ground, among other issues), and then see if Google Transit is any less enraging than TransLink’s own Trip Planner.

I started a draft of a big rant about facebook a couple of months ago, when I noticed myself becoming increasingly frustrated at how facebook was affecting normal social interaction amidst my group of friends. I’d go to parties, and no one was talking about things that had happened in real life; they were talking about facebook drama. No one ever said “I’ll e-mail you about that”, they said “I’ll facebook you” (and we all know how I feel about the use of nouns as verbs, e.g., Google). I even experienced quasi-discrimination because I wasn’t on facebook (”Can you forward the details of this event to Emma, since she’s anti-facebook?”). Whoa!

My resistance to facebook was based on several ideas. The most important one is that although I would like to be on facebook for the relatively superficial reasons of appearing “with it” to my colleagues and patrons, it would be impossible–so far as I can tell–to exist only professionally on facebook. At the root of my concerns there is the fact that I’d like to maintain some distance between my personal and professional lives.

I was also uneasy at how exhibitionist in nature facebook is: like any social network, people can spend a lot of time tweaking and massaging their online selves in ways that they never could in real life. I’ve been there - I had a livejournal for four years. You’re never completely honest, because in part, your existence there is for others’ interest. Like a lot of online forums–my blog included–this one seems to encourages us to become even more self-absorbed and indulgent than we already are. I know that many people don’t take it anywhere near this extreme, but there are still more people than not who do.

But since then, I’ve had discussions with almost every one of my closest friends, and there is this vague sense of unease and resentment present in each of them. They’re all on facebook, but they don’t necessarily like it. They think it’s fun, but complain about how easily they can lose a couple hours to it, when they were supposed to have been doing something else. Some of my more web-savvy friends think it’s lame because it’s a gated community and defies the democratic spirit of the internet. My friends who don’t work with the internet and web apps in their professional lives think it’s boring already and so last year. Mostly everyone generally regards it as a necessary evil.

Me, I don’t know. I know that objectively, I’m on shaky ground when I criticize it, because I haven’t ever had an account, myself. But I am familiar with how it works, having logged on to others’ accounts and poked around (ooops, where did those two and a half hours go?). Maybe I’m making a big deal out of nothing, since “facebook insanity” seemed to hit Vancouver, thrive, and then peter out in fairly short order. It doesn’t really bother me that much anymore. Use it or don’t. In fact, I’m glad that people have strong opinions about it, because it’s interesting to talk about.
I felt a twinge of validation when I read Stephen Cohen’s post about his decision not to sign up for fb. And then I felt stupid for not feeling confident enough in my own instincts and decisions. It’s tricky. I don’t want to turn into someone who refuses to get with the times–for instance, someone who doesn’t “do” e-mail–but I think this one’s not life or death. I am fortunate to have many good friends and colleagues I enjoy being around, and who for the most part, don’t exclude me because I’m not on facebook. I suspect that this will turn out like Friendster and MySpace (both of which I was a member of). I think the popularity of and problems with social networks sites reflect a cultural shift - one that will be fascinating to watch unfold–regardless of whether I’m on facebook!

An excellent one by Laurel over at 12 Hours of Power.

Don’t worry, mine’s coming, too.

One blog I’ve been reading a lot lately is Meredith Farkas’s “Information Wants to be Free“. She does a great job of bringing to light what other library bloggers are talking about, which is great for me, since I discovered long ago that I can’t possibly read all the blogs I’d like to read. What got me hooked on her blog was a very thoughtful response to a Library Revolution post on overachievers, underachievers, and motivation - which had me thinking about the debate all day. That’s the sign of a great blog! Meredith seems to be level-headed with a good sense of humour, and her writing is a pleasure to read.

In today’s post, she describes a “Library 2.0 idea adoption spectrum” that she and a colleague devised, which ranges from “Twopointopians” (awesome term apparently coined by Annoyed Librarian) to “Alienated”. It was an interesting exercise to determine where I fit into the spectrum. According to Meredith,

“I think most people who are into this stuff, me included, fall into the “Pragmatists” category. We are big technology fans, but we understand that these tools should only be used in libraries to fill needs. We realize that not all of our patrons are tech-savvy and that many of them have needs that can’t be filled by 2.0 technologies. We know that any time we focus on a 2.0 technology, we take time and resources away from something else, so we must carefully prioritize our technology use at work. Pragmatists manage to be both excited and skeptical.”

[my emphasis]

I guess I must be a pragmatist, but I suspect I may be headed towards becoming a grazer, because my excitement is wearing thin. Some days, I think I’ll scream if I read about one more new 2.0 application - library-related or not. I think it’s silly that it even needs a name anymore, which I guess it why I find the term “Library 2.0″ so ridiculous. For me, it comes down to one main thing. Either an application is useful, or it is not. I like Meredith’s assessment of why some uses of new technologies work, and others don’t:

“And a lot of the initial things I tried to implement failed. Why? Because I put the tool before the need, I didn’t consider the fact that my colleagues may not want to use these tools, and I didn’t really consider the maintenance burden these tools have.

…

[W]e’ve been successfully providing IM reference now since January 2006. But it’s mainly because it was done right, putting the need before the tool.”

[my emphasis]

Another aspect that comes into play here, I think, must be a generational divide. Had these new sorts of user-generated, AJAXy applications not been given a name and given the cool factor, I don’t think anyone my age (26) would have batted an eye. For my generation, “the next thing” has always been an inherent feature of the internet. I think when it comes to the internet, “progress” is a neutral descriptor - it’s just time marching on. The internet isn’t necessarily improving with all these allegedly 2.0 applications.

It just occurred to me, right now, that for me, keeping up with changes in web technologies has never really been “keeping up”–it’s just been the way it’s always been: finding out about new things, trying them out, using them if they’re good, and not if they’re bad. Maybe I’m biased because I’m the kind of person who enjoys reading about this sort of stuff — I know that not everyone does. Maybe for them, keeping up is an active effort.

It’s like this: when I was in high school, I had a couple of Tripod and Geocities homepages dedicated to assorted musicians and actors (and okay, yes, some bad teen poetry). In college, I had a Livejournal. Now in my working life, I have this blog. It’s just one thing replacing the other. But did people 20 years older than me have this experience? Or are they now looking at the internet with all these crazy things you can do and feeling totally overwhelmed - and either thinking “I have to master every single thing out there” or conversely, “I got along fine for ages without these, so why should I bother?”. I don’t know - I’m just speculating. Maybe what I’m wondering is whether you would find these types of “Library 2.0 - boon or bane?” discussions at all in a strictly under-30 set? It’s just interesting to ponder.

I know I’m all over the place here. I’m just trying to figure out where I stand in all of this. I guess I’m also a little worried that my growing wariness of this hype is going to turn me off of the internet–and that would probably not be good for my career. I’m already a curmudgeon in many other aspects of my life–and work is one area where I can’t afford to be!

Anyway, thanks, Meredith, for giving me a lot to think about and the fodder to break out of my blogging rut!

My colleague Steve Matthews, who is the president of VALL this year, recently left Clark Wilson, the law firm where he’d been the Director of Knowledge Services for almost ten years. He’s just launched a new company called Stem Legal, which helps law firms develop and deploy web marketing strategies. And of course, he’s writing a blog to go along with it: Law Firm Web Strategy.

If Steve’s first blog, Vancouver Law Librarian Blog, is anything to go by, Law Firm Web Strategy will be a stellar resource, too. He’s already got some good posts up on managing web properties and law firm website demographics.

While I think the Vancouver law library community will feel somewhat at a loss with Steve not being “one of us” anymore, his drive and leadership in his VALL position will continue to inspire and motivate us. Steve was one of the first people who encouraged me to start a blog, and has been a great informal mentor to many of us library techs who are passionate about technology.

New and future Stem Legal clients are luckier and wiser than they know. I’m so excited for Steve, and wish him success and fulfillment in his new venture!

I admit it: I’m a completely delinquent blogger this summer.

But anyway, there’s a hilarious article on PC Magazine website that was mentioned in SLA Connections today. Entitled “MySpace, Second Life, and Twitter Are Doomed“, the article paints a good picture of how ridiculous these sites are, comparing MySpace in particular to the thousands of “all about my dog” style personal websites from the first internet bubble. I wonder if there will be any reaction from the library blogosphere. I think the guy’s comments about these web 2.0 sites are bang on. Between this and my refusal to join Facebook, maybe I’m turning into a bitter Luddite!

Over at XKCD, a map of “Online Communities” reminds me, in some strange way, of the Dictionary of Imaginary Places. Only with a Sea of Memes. Check out the comic’s alt text, while you’re at it.