LibraryThing

I, er, already catalogue my books, largely because I want to be able to see them as an ordered whole and, until I moved to a new flat with Margot last week, they were stacked vertically in no order in a cupboard. I have a master catalogue, ordered alphabetically by author, and a few subject catalogues, following the Chicago Manual of Style bibliography rules. They're just Word documents for now, although I intend to convert them into XML.

I like the idea of sharing my collection with other people in LibraryThing, but not enough to add all my books (about 500 volumes) to my account. Instead I've started to transfer my biggest subject catalogue (150 volumes). It's quite good fun, although searches in a collection seem slow and unreliable, and the data is terrible.

Social bookmarking

I think Delicious is absolutely great. I wrote my library school dissertation on social bookmarking, where I considered the usefulness of tagging for academic information seeking, although I made my experiments in another system, Connotea. It's convenient to be able to reach your bookmarks from any web computer; it's interesting to view the data organised by tag or username (pivot browsing).

As I mentioned before, I've lost the habit of keeping my Delicious account current. But I've now tried for the first time importing, then 'bulk editing' one of the bookmarks folders from my browser, and it worked well. That could be a way to bring my Delicious account up to date.

Reflection on 23 Things

The Things I've continued to use after my first try are my blog and—mainly as a reader—Twitter. I'm certain I'll use Doodle again, probably Google Docs, possibly Evernote. I will make another effort to get into the habit of checking a feed reader: that must be the most painless way to top up your library current awareness. I've not used iGoogle since my Oscar Wilde quote gadget broke down.

This blog, though, has borrowed most of its momentum from the 23 Things programme. Will I keep it going after 23 Things ends? Yes, I think so. Having this platform's already invited odd items like 'Professionalism' and 'Unusual punishments', and I expect it will again.

Or as Wilde put it: 'Unable to retrieve: http://googlewidgets.net/gadgets/quotes/g/owilde.xml.php.'

Pushnote and Evernote

On first sight I thought Pushnote didn't do much that was new; that it was another social bookmarking system like Delicious. I do like those systems: pivot browsing on tags and—better—usernames can sometimes introduce you to worthwhile new sites. I've long lost the habit of keeping a social bookmarking account current, though.

Reading the Pushnote FAQ, I realised what it's for and why it's so called. The Pushnote toolbar button 'turns green when you visit a page where people have left comments', and you can click on it to read them and add your own. I've tried to install the Firefox browser extension that would add the button, but although I'm told 'Pushnote will be installed when you restart Firefox', nothing happens and I can't find a way to make it. Having read Gareth's sample of comments on the BBC website, I don't think I'm missing much.

Evernote seems more attractive. (Again the toolbar button didn't appear when I expected it, but this one I could eventually coax out.) It's not difficult to clip and save web material using Windows functions alone, but Evernote perhaps makes it more inviting: quicker, and easier to organise and reorganise. Being able to reach your notebooks from any web computer, and to share them, are great advantages.

Google Docs

This is brilliant. I quite often work on a document between different computers, and it's a pain keeping track of which version's the most recent: much better to have a single document I can reach from any web computer. I can also envisage using it to collaborate. It's reassuring to see full revision histories are kept.

Google Calendar

I created a Google Calendar a month ago, entered a few looming arrangements, and thought I'd report on the tool here when I'd used it a bit more. In fact I haven't used it or looked at it since.

Arrangements at my library, we enter in a shared file in Microsoft Schedule+. It's antique (preserved from Windows 95), but well adequate. For me as a single user, there's no reason to enter events a second time in my Google Calendar. The reasons to start using a Google Calendar at work would be that it can be shared more widely (that is, among readers), and remotely: at present, we put any arrangements we think readers need to know about in a notice, and stick it to the door. I accept they might prefer to find out the library's closed before they get there.

Arrangements at home, I enter on the nearest scrap of paper or—if I'm less concerned to remember them—just leave to my memory. I'm coming to agree with my dentist that this isn't a good system. A diary would obviously help, but I don't think it will be electronic (Google Calendar or another) until I have a suitable mobile phone. Stationery will suit me for now.

Doodle

I've taken part in Doodle polls before, with workmates and with friends, but not set up one. I was pleased to find there's no requirement to register: I have enough passwords to remember. In a few minutes I'd successfully arranged a meeting with a humouring Margot.

A good idea well realised. What more to say?

Screencasting

I was defeated by Thing 6. I tried to make a screencast to demonstrate how to reach and search LISA, the bibliographic database for library and information science, starting from the University Library’s home page. It took several takes to get a convincing performance out of myself, with decisive mouse sweeps and accurate typing. (Even then, I found the result almost too boring to watch through.) I spent more minutes fiddling with the timing of some simple captions, then by accident closed the Screencast-O-Matic window.

I decided my film wasn’t worth remaking. Anyway, the grapes were sour: screencasting hadn’t excited me. For what’s at bottom a series of menu choices, I wondered if the putative puzzled person would find it quicker to take in written instructions, and easier to refer back to them. But really, this only shows that I couldn’t think of a truly visual library computer task (the LibrarySearch word cloud is disqualified). If I needed to know how to design a bridge in TurboCAD, visualise experimental data in Matlab, or complete Quake in twelve minutes, I’d look for a screencast first.

Screenshots

I felt quite happy with this Thing. I don't intend to use many pictures on my blog, but it's good to have the technique to hand. I installed Lightshot as Ange suggested in her introduction, then went to Flickr and tried to think of something good that people might like to look at for three seconds. Got it: Aneurin Bevan!

Searching for photographs with Creative Commons licences, I found one of his statue in Cardiff. I cropped it with Lightshot, then (for reasons of style) converted the colour photograph to greyscale with a basic photo editor before uploading it to Blogger and posting it.

My first screenshot





Original photograph by Rhisiart Hincks

(Creative Commons)

Birds do it,
To-ries do it,
And just occasionally G-Ps do it:
Don't do it!
Don't— [That's enough. Margot.]

Twitter

Before 23 Things I held the sort of boring prejudices about Twitter that Annie sends up in her introduction: that it was about Stephen Fry and Sarah Brown telling each other and an awed retinue what they had for lunch. Clearly that's not it at all. Twitter people look outward, and share the things they find.

I have found it difficult to get into, though. I'm a slow writer and—might as well confess now—I don't read as much library commentary as I should. It's helped to look instead to what I'm doing at work for tweet inspiration.

I tweet as neil_bc.

Google Reader

There's too much happening! Of course in the world, which has consequences in Reader if you subscribe to any kind of news feed, but also on screen.

The lefthand bar I find a bit confusing. Wouldn't 'Browse for stuff' fit better under 'Explore'? Why is 'Starred items' not part of 'Your stuff'? Why 'Your stuff' when it's 'Blogs I'm following'? And I can't work out how to create subfolders under 'Subscriptions'.

I've subscribed to other 23 Things blogs, a few journalists, and a few library writers. I think I should experiment with similar subscriptions in Thunderbird, my email client, and see whether I prefer it.

Blogger, continued

It's certainly easy to open a blog with Blogger, but I had some trouble making mine look the way I wanted. Too many things, I found, were locked down behind the Template Designer interface. For example, I didn't want the background gradients at the edge of the text area that came with the first 'Simple' template, and it took several minutes to realise I was supposed to express this by choosing a different template.

Neither did Template Designer give me control over the text size, or font properties other than colour, to apply to the blog description. It didn't give me control over the text size to apply to date headers. And I couldn't have my blog title appear in capitals (which seemed important). On the other hand, you're free to edit the HTML template, where I could do these things.

Blogger

I think my blog has found its final shape, so it's time to post my thoughts on making it, along with what I hope to get out of 23 Things and my previous experience of social software. My only experience is of bookmarking sites like Delicious and Connotea, which I used around 2006: I wrote my library school dissertation on indexing in these systems. I'm not sure message boards count, but in my teens (the late 1990s) I followed one dedicated to the cinema of the nouvelle vague. Oh all right—Nintendo games.

What I hope to get out of 23 Things is a better awareness of the variety and possibilities of social software, through a weekly prod into trying out different systems. My blog, where I'll report what I've done, I also wanted to be anchored in living and working in Cambridge, which I hope explains the bulletins from civil society. Something I've realised this week I should think about is how professionalism sits with a political commitment. Perhaps I could start by looking into the work of the Haldane Society, for lawyers.

I'll post later on making my blog.

iGoogle

I set up my iGoogle start page yesterday. I have news feeds from two papers, the weather report, and a daily Oscar Wilde epigram. And briefly a copy of Space Invaders. I was happy with the 'Classic' theme, but Margot told me I was boring and made me look for one more distinctive. I ended up with a photograph of boats moored at Port Said.

I understand what iGoogle is now. I'd expected to be able to add any site with an RSS feed to my page. In fact, you assemble your page from purpose-built applications: gadgets. It's another Google product, Reader, that works with feeds.

Playing Space Invaders at work reminded me that the PC games I played as a boy sometimes had boss keys. The boss key would pause the game and display a spreadsheet (that is, while your boss walked past). Of course on a modern windowing machine you just hit Alt, Tab. I would imagine.