#14 - I got a LibraryThing, you got a LibraryThing, everybody's got a LibraryThing

Are you a book lover or cataloger at heart? Do you enjoy finding lost and forgotten gems on the shelf to read?

If you answered 'yes' to either of the above questions, then LibraryThing may be the thing for you.

LibraryThing was developed by booklovers, for booklovers and its basic function is most excellent - it lets you quickly and painlessly create an online catalog of your personal book collection. And what makes it even more special is its social networking component - once you've entered your books, you get to see everyone elses via book titles, authors, and the tags you assign to each entry.

Yes, it's really that simple - you create an account and get to it. Add a book to your catalog with the title alone (it's so easy that you don’t even need to know what a MARC record is). And once you've got a title (or 2 or 200) you are able to connect to other users with similar reading tastes.

Let me illustrate - this link will take you to the Learning 2.0 account set up for this exercise (it will open in a separate window). If this takes you to the 'cover view,' look above the titles and click on 'list view.' From the 'list view,' look to the far right side of the screen - it shows you how many others have entered the title in question (the second number, by the way, is the # of 'pro' subscribers with the title). Think I'm the only one with enough time on my hands to read through 'Tintin: The Complete Companion?' Think again - its on the bookshelves of 60+ other Library Thing users.

You can also add a widget to display titles that are in your catalog or install a Library ThingSearch box on your blog or any other website you've set up (instructions are here).

So why join the ranks and create your own library online? With over 65,000 registered users (BTW: LibraryThing also has group forum for library staff) and 4.7 million catalog books, you are bound to discover something new.

Me? I'm still hoping to find more Dexy's Midnight Runners fans...

A quick, really quick, tour

The last thing before today's Discovery Exercise is the Library Thing tour. Take a quick run through these seven or eight screens for an overview of key Library Thing features and functions.

Now to the Discovery Exercise.

1. Take a look around LibraryThing and create an account.
   
2. Add a least 5 books to your library.
   
3. Blog about your findings and be sure to link to your LibraryThing catalog.
4. Already have a LibraryThing account and want to try something new? Give Shelfari or GuruLib a try instead.

That, everyone, is it for today's discovery exercise - excellent work.

But, wait, want to read a really interesting but long blog posting? A LibraryThng creator compares their tagging to that in use on Amazon.com.

Next up: Wikis...

#13 - Technorati and the search for your blog

So now that you’ve been blogging for awhile, you might be wondering just how big the blogosphere is.

Well according to Technorati, the leading search tool and authority for blogs, the number of blogs doubles just about every 6 months with over 57 million blogs currently being tracked by the site. If the blogging trend continues, it is estimated that Technorati will have tracked its 100 millionth blog in just 5 months.

Yes, big numbers. But, as you’ve already seen for yourselves, blogging is so easy that almost every industry (including libraries) have been trying to find ways to make blogging work for them.

That's why, today, we're going to look more closely at Technorati.

Do you want to make sure your blog is being tracked? Register your blog with Technorati. Do you want to tag your posts to make them easier to find through a Technorati search? Perhaps not your Learning 2.0 blog, sure, but if you owned a business and were trying to attract attention? You'd register it with Technorati.

As a blogger blogger (aka someone who uses blogger.com to blog) you are probably getting tracked by Technorati already - it keeps track of new Blogger blogs by default. But if you want to take full advantage of the service Technorati offers up, you'll need to do this more formally and claim your blog.

And the tagging in Technorati? It is wonderfully easy - you either paste a bit of HTML code into the bottom of a blog post or follow the simple directions you find when you get to the Technorati website. Once one of these are in place, Technorati will pick your tags up when it spiders (or web crawls) your blog.

So what's really popular in the blogosphere these days? Take a look at Techorati's popular page.

And now that you've seen what is incredibly popular in the wide world, we'll take a look at what is popular in the smaller library world - today's Discovery Exercise is nice and easy.

1. Head over to Technorati (link will open in a separate window)
   
2. Try a keyword search for “Learning 2.0” in Blog posts, in tags and then in the Blog Directory (use the pull down menu next to the search box to change what you are searching). Are the results different?
   
3. Now try searching for kcls27things. Check the results on this one - it's even pulling up your Flickr images.

Told you that would be nice and easy. Wanted to give you a break because we've got one more thing tomorrow.

Next up: Library Thing...

#12 - Tagging is Del.icio.us

This week we’ll be looking more closely at web 2.0 applications that take serious advantage of tagging (we've already looked at one - Flickr). Tagging, remember, allows you to associate keywords with online content - webpages, pictures, posts, etc. It is considered a folksonomy, AKA an unstructured categorization scheme.

Categorization scheme?

As a library employee you know a thing or two about these – we use the largest categorization scheme on the planet, Library of Congress subject headings. Library of Congress, though, is much more formalized and is considered a taxonomy.

This week we’ll look at still more innovative applications that take great advantage of tagging – Del.icio.us, Technorati, and Library Thing.

But before we get too deep in, though, let’s hear from a cataloger. In this week’s podcast David talks to Libby McClean about the intersection of tagging and traditional library cataloging, as well as her experience with Library Thing.

Click the Play button above
to hear this week's Podcast (3:18)
Del.icio.us

The specific focus of today's lesson is Del.icio.us. In addition to having a most excellent name (yes, that’s a real URL – the .us at the end stands for United States), Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site that lets you save bookmarks to a central location (no more copying them to multiple browsers on multiple computers) and classify them all with tags.

How is that social?

Well, in addition to tagging your bookmarks, you get to see how other users have tagged the same links and see related websites are important to them. This is an excellent way to find websites that may be of interest to you.

Del.icio.us even offers RSS feeds - you can create a shared bookmark site (say, for your branch reference staff) and receive news every time a new link is added (say, when one of your colleagues adds a new link).

Give us twelve minutes.

We are going to cede to stage to Kathleen Gilroy who has posted an excellent video podcast on the subject – she’ll show you everything you’d want to know about Del.icio.us in just 12 minutes. Here’s the podcast link – it’ll open in a separate window. You’ll need to be on a computer with speakers or a headset.

And if you are on a computer without audio capabilities? Take a look at Us.ef.ul: A beginners guide to Del.icio.us.

Now that you are armed with this new and delicious knowledge (sorry, had to use the word as an adjective somewhere), you are ready for today’s Discovery Exercise.

1. Take a look around Del.icio.us using the 27Things account (this will open in a separate window) that was created for this exercise.
   
2. Explore the site options and try clicking on a bookmark that has also been bookmarked by a lot of other users (click on the text that reads 'saved by # other people'). Can you see the comments they added about this bookmark or the tags that they used to categorize this reference?
   
3. Create a blog post about your experience and thoughts about using this tool in libraries. Can you see the potential of this tool for research assistance? Or just as an easy way to create bookmarks that can be accessed from anywhere?
   

That, everyone, is all for today's lesson - thanks for completing another of the 27 things.

Next up: Technorati…

#5 - Discover Flickr

Welcome back for another week of Learning 2.0. This week we focus on photos and Flickr.

Photo sharing websites have been around for several years. Flickr, though, is different - it's half photo sharing and half online community. How so? Flickr makes incredibly intelligent use of linking keyword 'tags' to create associations between photos and between users.

Let me illustrate.

Take a look at a photo on the Learning 2.0 Flickr profile (this link will open in a new window). Look to the right side of the page and scroll down until you see the label 'Tags.' Click on the 'library architecture' tag - this will quickly display all other photos with the same tag in our Learning 2.0 Flickr account. Quickly, near instantly, you have linked to all similarly tagged photos in our account - this works the same whether you have 3 photos with the same tag or 3000.

Now click on the link that says 'see all public photos tagged with 'libraryarchitecture.' This is where we get into the online community part of Flickr - just as quickly as we saw other library architecture photos in the Learning 2.0 account, we're now seeing similarly themed photos from other Flickr members.

Let's have Flickr fill in some of the blanks - take a look at their FAQ page on tags. And, if for no other reason that it's so well done, take a look at the image below - it was posted by Flickr user cambodia4kidsorg.

The above photo illustrates the beauty of tags - there are many many ways to describe whatever it is you are looking at in a photo (in this case: Pen, Marker, Sharpie, Purple). Why not include them all as tags?

Flickr also makes use of groups. Groups are communities of like minded photo posters. And, yes, there are quite a few groups with a library theme. Let Flickr fill in the rest of the blanks - take a look at their FAQ page on groups.

But who is going to spend time posting photos, tagging them, and particpating in Flickr groups?

That, my colleagues, would be you. Or at least one of you - in this week's podcast David talks to Pam Riess about her experiences using Flickr outside the library world.


Click the Play button above
to hear this week's Podcast (3:21)
And inside the library world? A growing number of public libraries are starting to use Flickr for many of the functions mentioned in today's podcast. Take a look at some of the links contained on Library Stuff and see what's out there.

And now, finally, we get to today's Discovery Exercise. Today you get to choose - scenario 1 or scenario 2. Either way, you'll be asked to blog about your experiences in your week #3 blog entry...

Scenario 1

1. Take a good look around Flickr and discover an interesting image that you want to blog about.
   
2. Blog about it and be sure to include either a link to the image or a copy of the image itself in your blog posting. For the later, you can either use Blogger's photo upload tool or Flickr's blogging tool (you'll need to set up a Flickr account for this).
   

Scenario 2

1. Create a free Flickr account.
   
2. Use a digital camera to capture a few photos.
   
3. Upload these to your Flickr account and tag at least one of the images “kcls27things” and mark it public.
   
4. Create a blog post in your blog about your photo and the experience of getting it loaded to Flickr (be sure to include the image in your post - use Flickr's blogging tool or Blogger's photo upload feature.)
   

And before you get started, a quick word about photo posting etiquette. When posting identifiable photos of other people (especially minors) is it advisable to get the person's permission before posting their photo in a publicly accessible place like Flickr. Never upload pictures that weren't taken by you unless you have the photographer's consent and always give credit when you include photos taken by someone else in your blog (as I have above in the case of cambodia4kidsorg).

That, everyone, is the end of the Discovery Exercise.

But if you want still more, feel free to take a look at these tutorials:

- Flickr's 'What Is Flickr' tour
- Mediamazine Flickr Tutorials
- Flickr's popular tags

Or relax and curl up with a good book...


(it's okay to post this photo, he's my son)

Next up: More Flickr fun and Flickr Mashups...