ALA Emailed Me My Password!

I'm a member of the American Library Association. In the past two months, I've received two email reminders to renew my membership. Within the body of the email, ALA included my login and password. It was not a secure email.

I have never experienced an organization or business sending me unsolicited login and passwords before this encounter.

Usually, when a user forgets his or her login or passwords, he will be directed to a secure website where he can answer a secret question and then have an email sent to him. When he opens his email, he will find a link to a secure website that has contains his login and password.

Why can't ALA institute similar procedures. The ALA prides itself on defending Americans' right to privacy, so why does it flaunt it's members' privacy?

"Most people just want to get in, get it and get out"

Usability guru Jakob Nielson says that the hype to embrace Web 2.0 is resulting in sloppy, hard to use web pages.

Read this for more.

Second Life?

The one last thing that we have not touched on is Second Life. It seems to be all the rage right now, and some libraries are putting in a presence there.

I personally am not excited about spending real time in a virtual world. If could somehow spend virtual time in a virtual world I would have an alternate life there.

But I think it's worth having staff explore. I can understand not having it in the the Learning 2.0 program, since it takes time to set up one' own presence there, and takes time to get acclimated.

Perhaps if KCLS continues this program, as I suggested in my last post on say, a monthly basis, this could be an option to explore.

Again, I want to thank all thos responsible for making this happen!

Reflections

My experience with Learning 2.0 was completely positive. The program was set up in such a way that I could explore a topic, idea or tool in as much depth as I had interest or time.

I like to learn new things, whether it helps me in my work or otherwise, so this was really an extension of my normal daily life. The difference is that the program led me to material that I would not necessarily have found on my own or would have found but would not have taken the time to explore,or think about the consequences of such a tool on the library world.

Nothing really surprised me. The Internet technology industry continues to develop at an exponential rate, so I was not surprised that there were so many tools that I had never seen.

So, of course I would do this over again for the experience. It was fun exploring on my own, but it was equally interesting to talk with my colleagues about what they were doing.

As an advocate, it was also gratifying to help others jump into the mix.

I think this kind of learning opportunity is a great one. I actually would love to continue receiving exercises, maybe on a monthly basis to showcase new technologies and tools coming down the pike.

Thanks for making this happen!

KCLS Digital Audio Collection

I have been exploring the Overdrive and Listening Library collections, as well as the digital video collection. It's all very impressive and handy. I've downloaded some digital audio, and video, but I own an Ipod, so it has not been convenient for me to listen to the selections I've downloaded. Once I have the compatable mp3 player, I think I will begin to use the service more.

Patrons who have discovered it really love the service. I gave a demonstration to one of our Friends' groups and they were impressed and began to use our digital content.

I think the different formats are confusing though. It's difficult toconceptualize the differences between the digital books to read, from the digital books to listen to, from the digital players that patrons check out. I think we need more distinct icons separating them on the catalog. When searching from the home page, it is easier to keep a handle on the different formats.

I have not looked to see how other libraries are doing this yet, but I should.

I think that these digital books may very well eventually replace cd's and tapes. From a user's point of view, this is great. It's so much easier to carry a tiny device that doesn't skip when you move, than it is to lug around a cd player and those huge boxes of tapes or cd's.

However, from a professional point of view I have some questions. Once we start moving into digital content, libraries no longer own that content. I worry about public libraries becoming dependant for content on corporations who own the digital material. We will simply be renting content on behalf of our patrons, and we will have no control over what that content is.

I lament that libraries were not on the cutting edge of the digital revolution and didn't think to create their own digital content cooperatives or companies. I know that academic libraries have done this to some extent with serials, I think it could have been done with digital audio as well.

Public Libraries seem to be lagging in this area, and I think they need to catch up soon. PLA should be taking the lead on this, rather than accepting so many large donations from big corporations to keep PLA's leaders placated.

Wild World of Library Podcasts

I have been an ITunes devotee for some time, so I have not looked at other podcast download sites. I explored two provided for us on the KCLS Intranet and found much more interesting content on the Yahoo Podcast page than the Podcast.net page.

I used keyword searching for both, but the Yahoo page simply seemed to have more interesting content with regard to podcasts in general. I subscribed to the Science Friday podcast. I noticed that some libraries are simply posting every program that they host, and I think that it may be a waste time. Not all programs transfer well as Podcasts. Yahoo seemed to have more content that was specifically designed for podcasts, and topics seemed interesting from a professional point of view, but none seemed to be consistent in their publication. They didn't seem to be suitable choices for Bloglines.

Back to Podcast.net. I added Kankakke Public Library's program podcast series which has 52 episodes to Bloglines. I'll take a look at it occasionally to see if there are any adult programming ideas that I could glean from them.

Julia Child Visits the Library of Congress

I was surfing Youtube for a good video to post here and found one that featured two of my topics: cooking and libraries. What could be better than Julia Child visiting the Library of Congress?

Well, you be the Judge.