Photoblogging

I didn't really know much about photoblogging until recently when I discovered Flickr. Flickr is devoted to making photos available for viewing and also to helping organize photo collections. Because a lot of people today are using camera phones and digitial cameras, it is much easier to take lots of pictures than with a traditional camera, where you have to pay for film and processing and likely will not take as many pictures of random things since you have to pay for every photo. I personally don't have a digital camera, and so every time I look at Flick I think about how cool it would be to take random pictures and post them on the web.


This was one of the cool pictures that I found on Flickr. They have a section called Interestingness where they select especially interesting pictures off the site. You can search for interesting photos from the last seven days or by calendar. It's a nice feature that exposes you to some cool and clever ways of looking at things, especially for people who are into art and/or photography.

Another cool feature of Flickr is that people can attach tags, which are like captions or keywords, to their photos, which will bring up those pictures when people are searching for a specific word. I tried searching for pictures of sheepdogs by entering "old english sheepdog" into the search box (because I think sheepdogs are the cutest!) and was pleased to discover that there are 44 pictures tagged with "old english sheepdog" on Flickr.

There is also a FlickrBlog. It looks like Flickr employees select photos that they like and then link the photoblogger's site so people who like the photo can look at the blogger's other stuff. I found this cool picture on there, which I like a lot and I think it's a good Halloween picture.

24/7 Online Reference

I recently moved from the Chicago area out to Denver, CO. I have been trying to get a job working at the Denver Public Library and as such have been checking out their website extensively to try and find out about what kinds of programs and services they offer to their users. One of the most interesting things I have found is a program called SmartyPants, which is an online reference service available 24/7. This means that if a patron is at home at 3am working on a homework assignment or merely wakes up in the middle of the night needing to know an answer to a question, they can log onto SmartyPants and be connected any time of the day or night to one of the DPL's reference librarians.

I was first introduced to online reference in my LIS 704 Reference class at Dominican University. In that class, we spent some time asking questions of online reference librarians to see how it compared to the service we had received in live reference interviews and to learn about how it worked. We also had a reference librarian come in to our class and talk about her experience working with online reference. She said that the people that she noticed the greatest disparity in questions from were teenagers, because many of them are used to using instant messenger-type chat programs and have no qualms about asking a librarian a question that way, but may be wary of walking up to a librarian in person and asking a question (especially if they have had negative experiences with librarians in the past).

The way that online reference works is that a user logs onto the library's website and locates their section about online reference. There is usually a button saying something like "Connect me to a librarian!" or "Ask a question!" A box then pops up, either on the side of the screen or in a separate window, in which the user can type out their question. If the librarian is busy, it may take a few minutes to get an acknowledgment that the question has been received, but the service certainly doesn't take any more time than it would to wait in line at a reference desk. The librarian and user then type back and forth as the librarian tries to clarify the question or offer suggestions to the user. Most sites also allow the patron to receive a transcript of the reference interview e-mailed to the user when the conversation has ended.

Online reference is a really great tool and I'm glad to know that my new library offers it. One of the nicest features of online reference is that it is usually available to anyone using the internet, not just people who belong to a specific library's district. While I don't generally ask a lot of questions at the library (I'm one of those people who would rather wander around for 20 minutes than have to bother someone who looks busy), I think I will try out SmartyPants sometime to see how it compares to other online reference library services I have used in the past for school.

The Digital Divide

The Pew Internet & American Life Project recently released a report entitled "Digital Divisions." This report discusses the current state of internet usage among different age groups and people of different racial backgrounds. The research was conducted in May-June 2005, and some of the most important findings from the study are:

• 22% of Americans say they never use the internet


• 70% of white Americans say they go online, compared to 57% of black Americans


• English-speaking Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites are equally likely to use the internet


• While 53% of Americans between 60-69 have internet access, only 22% of those age 70 or older use the internet

The report also mentioned a 2002 study conducted by Pew which found that only 38% of Americans with disabilities have access to the internet. I think the findings of these two studies prove why it's so important for libraries to not only have internet access available to their patrons, but also why libraries need to have programs available for training people on how to use the internet. For example, when the Pew researchers asked people who don't use the internet the reasons that they don't use it, many said that they either do not have access, or that getting access is either too frustrating or too expensive. Likewise, some people reported that they didn't use the internet because they never learned how to use a computer or because they felt they were too old to use it.

The study also found that household income directly correlates to not only internet access, but also to broadband access, and that those who had a broadband connection to use were more likely than dial-up users to use the internet for a variety of tasks, such as shopping, banking, and even blogging. I think that libraries need to make more of an effort to promote their computer and internet availability to patrons and try harder to reach out to groups -- such as minorities and the elderly -- who don't have as many internet resources as others.

"Top Ten Web Design Mistakes" lists

I recently read the article "Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2005" by Jakob Nielsen and it gave me some helpful ideas about what to do when I start creating my own webpage. Nielsen laid out the ten most irritating usability issues for users of the Web, according to readers of his newsletter. Most of the items that he listed were things that have frustrated me in the past, as well, but there were a few things that I am going to make a mental note of so that I don't do those things when I get my own site up and running.

One thing that I definitely need to get better at is making sure that the links that I insert are clear and easy to find. I've been keeping a personal blog for about a year, and one thing that I do a lot is to hide links within text rather than making it clear about where the reader needs to click in order to access the link. I also want to remember to put some contact information on my page because I have visited a lot of sites where, when I've tried to contact the publisher of the site, I've gotten e-mails returned to me as undeliverable because the e-mail address was entered incorrectly or is out of date. I also want to make sure that any photos that I include are available for enlargement.

I got some more ideas about what not to do on my website by viewing Nielsen's 2004 version of "Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design". This list reminded me that it's important to title my web page so that it is located by search engines and that pages that are linked from my main page should have titles that give information about what will be found on the page so that it is easy for users to use their Back button to locate the page they are interested in. The 2004 list also reminded me that it's important to make sure that visited links are made a different color than unvisited links so that users know which links they've looked at and which contain new material.

Library/librarian blogs

I looked at four library/librarian blogs recently to try to find out what kind of things librarians blog about and to become more familiar with what's going on in the library world. The four blogs that I looked at were Librarian.net, DIY Librarian, Librarian Avengers, and The Well Dressed Librarian.

I think that Librarian.net is a good blog to check out periodically because it has a lot of links to interesting library-related topics, but they are entertaining and not just boring articles about library policy and things of that nature. I also liked the fact that all the posts on Librarian.net were in some way library-related. Some of the other blogs I checked out seemed to be more personal blogs kept by librarians, which are fine and can be useful to read, but sometimes wading through all sorts of personal posts gets kind of time-consuming.

While DIY Librarian was one of those sites with more personal entries than I was really interested in reading, I did like the setup of her blog. It was easy to find an article on a specific topic in case a reader was searching for an entry that she remembered reading and there were a lot of links to other blogs. The DIY Librarian blog is where I came upon the third blog that I looked at, which was Librarian Avengers.

Librarian Avengers was another site that I think contained too much personal blogging to be considered a must-read blog for library science students. However, the categories on this site were also easy to search, and the FAQ and About pages were interesting because it made me feel like I had more of an idea about who was writing the blog.

The Well Dressed Librarian was the fourth library-related blog that I checked out and I actually liked it the least of the four. It was mostly just musings about life from a librarian's point of view. It might be worthwhile reading if you knew the person writing it, but I didn't think it would be worth my time to make it something that I read frequently.

Overall, my perusal of librarian blogs made me realize that there are a lot of library and librarian blogs that don't really have a good deal of information about the library profession. Of the ones that I read, I think the only one that I might revisit again would be Librarian.net because it actually had library-related articles that I found interesting or amusing rather than just personal stories about life as a librarian.

This is my first post!

Hello! My name is Jennifer and I am blogging for LIS 753 at Dominican University. Over the next six weeks, I will be posting five entries about libraries, the Web, and technology.