Perfectionist Feline

Practice Makes Perfect


Never a Down Moment

Updates from Crafts Flickr

Paul has just uploaded a new batch of photos to update my knitting progress. Please click sets Knitted Hats & Scarves and Afghans, when you have a minute. Thank you for your time and interest.

Thoughts on SCPL Learning 2.0 Program

Since the introduction of SCPL Learning 2.0 at 2007's Staff Training Day, I have been doing its 23 Things Exercises. To recall my experience in the whole process, I have three phrases to describe about the program, and its coordinators & tutors: comprehensive curriculum, systematic approach, and strong supervision.

1. Comprehensive Curriculum
The curriculum of 23 Things is comprehensive in its inclusion of social networking softwares. Despite the exclusion of some newfangled sites such as Facebook and Second Life, the program has prepared its participants with the appropriate exposure to today's popular Web 2.0 utilities, from Blogging to Flickr, from RSS & newsreaders to playing with Librarything & online image generator, from tagging, Folksonomies & Technorati to Wikis, and from online applications & tools to Podcasts, videos & downloadable audios. The spectrum of exercises has covered the usage of simple texts in blogging to graphics and other multimedia options.

2. Systematic Approach
I am very impressed by the gradual but systematic pace of the curriculum for its participants to proceed. At the beginning, I had no firsthand experience with most of the software mentioned above. Take Blogger for instance. I have participated in Daily Refdesk's Blog and published a couple of posts. However there does exit a difference between the role of an author and that of an administrator. Prior to my own blog, I had no idea as to how to create, design and manage a blog. With the help of the exercises and tireless tutors, I have been exploring Blogger's three major elements on its Dashboard: Posts, Settings and Layout. I have not only customized my blog and profile, but also have used it fluently by adding new author and inserting live links, images, sounds and videos. The volume of my posts has increased as well. So far I have published 17 posts since September 2007.

3. Strong Supervision
The success of SCPL 2.0 program is largely due to the time and efforts by its two coordinators and three tutors. Their supervision can be seen from four aspects: 1) 23 Things Exercises are always there for participants to reference to; 2) "The 23 Things ... Hint o' the Week", a message with different content, is sent out by email, and then posted on Intranet; 3) Every Friday morning 8-10:00, one of the three tutors, along with one coordinator, is there to help interested participants and answer their questions; and 4) Coordinators are constantly and closely tracking the 23 Things Tracker maintained by 94 participants. Their strong supervision has anticipated and prevented numerous potential problems and concerns.

The SCPL Learning 2.0 program is all but over, although new challenges of Web 3.0 are on the horizon. I think I will miss our coordinators and tutors in the between time.

From FM Radio to Podcast: Car Talk

I have been a fan of Tom & Ray Magliozzi's NPR: Car Talk for more than 15 years. Ever since my first job after library school at Berkeley, I have been fascinated by this pair of brothers' humor and knowledge about cars. Strangely speaking, I have been unconsciously thrown into a revolution of broadcasting technology: from FM radio to streaming archive, then to iTunes and Podcast.

I remember that Wednesday's eleven to noon used to be sacred to me. I always tried to schedule this hour free from questions and visitors at Creators Equity Foundation Library, which specialized in architecture and environmental design. I would feel so badly if I missed that particular Wednesday's broadcast but always managed to make it up on Saturday morning's radio re-broadcast.

Later I was overjoyed that I could go to NPR's archive to listen to Car Talk via the Internet, instead of being limited to FM radio's scheduled broadcasts. However limitations still existed. For one thing you had to use a computer with an Internet connection.

Now, since the availability of iTunes podcasts, downloaded to my thumb-drive and also published in my Bloglines, I can listen to Tom & Ray virtually anywhere and anytime. Technology does provide us with freedom and pleasure if used properly.

Pleasant Surprises from YouTube

YouTube is not an unfamiliar name to me. As a matter of fact, it had been recommended by friends for a very long time. I was never curious enough though to sign up and explore until this morning.

I was a little frustrated at the mere stage of signing up. User name, for instance, did not please YouTube. It complained time and again that my various login names had been taken. Finally I had to use my real name. Once in, I was disappointed at pages of FEATURED VIDEOS. For some reason, they failed to strike a chord with me. It was not until I flipped through all 5 pages and saw Origami Animation video by nariomaru. From there I was further pleasantly surprised by video clips of funny cats.

Also from there, I was met with another pleasant surprise. In less than 5 minutes, Victor, one of our three capable tutors, kindly showed me how to use Embed, how to post a favorite video in my blog and how to conduct a search in YouTube. He also cautioned me about the limit of video time duration after his and Jessica's video posting experience in YouTube.

With Victor's help, I was able to experiment with one video per posting. To push the envelope, I managed to cluster a group of four videos (or more) per posting by including all those talking cats.

Quality Control in LibraryThing

I am glad that LibraryThing is one of the three nominees in the Books category of Web 2.0 Awards. It has won the following results in the five areas examined:

• Usability 4 / 5
• Usefulness 4 / 5
• Social Aspects 4 / 5
• Interface & Design 3 / 5
• Content Quality 4/5

I have used LibraryThing for 23things' exercises. I agree with the comment that it does Connect with people who read similar books to you, and get suggestions as to what you should read next. Its social aspects and usability & usefulness are exemplary. However I do have some personal reservation about the aspect of its Content Quality.

To introduce Davenport Cement Centennial, a book neither in Library of Congress nor in Amazon, two major sources for one to import books from in LibraryThing, I added the book manually by choosing the option of other ways to add. Little did I realize that adding was the easy part. Days later when showing the title to the author, I found out that the site had arbitrarily reversed the author's first name as her last name.

There is a file for AUTHORS, but it is read only. One can also make changes in Your Library, as suggested by Abby (Librarian with librarything.com) after my contacting the site, but your change will not make any difference to the main catalog. Once wrong, always wrong. The problem of reversing author's name has remained unresolved at this time of writing, whereas my follow-up question to Abby has been buried somewhere in her mailbox. So be aware of quality control in LibraryThing.

A Visit to Zoho Writer and Google Docs

This afternoon, I went to the sites of Zoho Writer and Google Docs and had very fruitful visits.

For some reason, I like a lot Zoho Writer for creating a Wikie file, for it has far more desktop publishing options than plain Google documents, such as inserts, styles, page setup and view.

Google Docs make up for the lack by providing its users with a full spectrum of applications, including DOCUMENT, SPREADSHEET (Excel) and PRESENTATION (PowerPoint).

Despite the fact that there are some differences in the use of terminology, e.g., IMPORT in Zoho is in fact UPLOAD in Google, the two applications in question are fairly easy to use, with their user-friendly interface. Just a word of caution: if you want the public to use them, please let them know that they need to sign up first with these two sites.

eAudiobooks from Netlibrary

I am a late bloomer in utilizing eAudiobooks, even though I have written about them in two of my papers, Library Innovations in the 21st Century and Language Learning Resources at Santa Cruz Public Libraries.

Even though a new adopter, I do have fun with those cdless and cassetteless eAudiobooks. There are a number of advantages in doing so: 1) I do not have to wait a long time for Cataloging and Processing to handle new titles; 2) I do not have to wait in the queue for popular titles. I can acquire in an hour, instead of months; and 3) I do not have to worry about damaged cds or cassettes during the playing.

To utilize eAudiobooks, you may consider the following steps:
1. For first-time users, sign up with Netlibrary by creating a user name and password;
2. Conduct a search at http://www.netlibrary.com/Search/SearchResults.aspx;
3. Click Download this eAudiobook;
4. Select Check Out & Download CD Quality;
5. Login with your user name and password;
6. Choose either Open with (Window Media Player (default) or Save to Disk;
7. Open the downloaded file an hour or so later, depending on its size;
8. Put in your user name and password again the first time to acquire a listening license for 21 days;
9. Renew as needed, if you cannot finish listening in 21 days. At CHECKOUT, choose option 3: Check Out (No Download. Only license to play file); and
10. Trash the file from your computer or player, when you have completed listening.

So far I have managed to download two titles: The Italian Secretary and Set in Darkness. The downloading time is not as formidable as I was warned. The quality is excellent. What is more, there is no trouble at all when you resume your listening later.

Favorite Restaurants in Santa Cruz County

Gilda's and Severino's Bar & Grill are my favorite restaurants in Santa Cruz County. The former is a family-run business, legendarily the original Stagnaro on Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf. The moment you enter its door, you will be greeted informally but warmly, and before long you will be served and pampered by waiters and waitresses of all ages. Everything is designed specially for you, just as your parents remember your childhood favorite dishes. Go there Wednesday evening for spaghetti night and meet the matron, Gilda, herself.

In contrast to Gilda’s, is Severino's Bar & Grill. It is very modern and staffed almost exclusively by young attractive waiters and waitresses. Unlike some businesses you will immediately be treated as a second-class citizen if you refuse any fancy drinks. Here you are the most important guest, with or without drinks. Despite its expensive-looking premises, you can actually stretch your money to an amazing degree. The key is to remember which night it offers pork chops or other special dishes.

Favorite Places in Santa Cruz County

Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf and Capitola Wharf, Venetian Hotel & Village are my favorite places to frequent whenever I have time or friends, and family members come to visit Santa Cruz. On Municipal Wharf, you can take a long and healthy stroll to make your doctors happy. At this time of the year, you might want to stop to admire night colonies of sea lions migrating from their designated perches at the end of the wharf to the dry decks of Stagnaro’s and other families’ docks. Despite their weight and size, those poor creatures must feel cold when the darkness falls.

You can visit Capitola Wharf, Venetian Hotel and Village in one breath. They are so cutely clustered together, just like three peas in one pod. Come here whenever you think that your life is too busy and too out of control. Here time and place stop and even freeze for you. But don’t think that all is quiet in here. A few months ago, my whole family witnessed the burning of a boat on the water until a rescue ship from Monterey County came to put out the fire. “Be a tourist in your own town,” as Bob Holmes once said to me.

Wikis in Libraries

It is very interesting to see libraries using wikis for various purposes. For instance, Subject Guides by SJCPL (St. Joseph County Public Library) are, totally devoid of graphics or other web devices, list 10 major subject headings. BookLoversWikie by Princeton Public Library sprinkles a couple of logo and book covers. Indexes to the Reviews are well-organized. For some reason, I wish that those indexes would be served as a cover page. "Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki" is very informative but its format is just like any typical wiki entries.

For some reason, I like ALA 2006 New Orleans wiki the best. Since it is used for a specific event, it is short but sweet, with Welcome and Topics two main sections subdivided and connected by many mini sections and files. It is not too wordy or flashy at all.

Basic Concept 2: Library 2.0

Needless to say, Library 2.0 is an extension of Web 2.0. To adapt Web 2.0 into the library world, library professionals use this term to describe a new-fangled set of concepts for developing and delivering library services.

I find Dr. Wendy Schultz's descriptions of library evolution fascinating. In her To a temporary place in time ... she has outlined 4 versions of library. Namely, 1) Library 1.0: Commodity. Books were commodities, traced back from the first library in Alexandra to the industrial era; 2) Library 2.0: Product. Library collections, books or media/digital files, are products. They are everywhere, barrier-free and participatory; 3) Library 3.0: Library 3.0--Web 3D to Library 3D: Services like SecondLife for users to subscribe, where library customers use virtual collections, but with personal introductions; 4) Library 4.0 Library as aesthetic experience. Libraries will be at once spacious and mobile, both virtual and augmented 3D reality, with a brand-new model added: knowledge spa. In a word, it is a utopia of library that librarians have dreamed for numerous generations.

After a brief examination of the above concepts and models, I had one realization gradually dawned on me. No matter how different time and technology is, the library exists to serve users at a particular moment in history, with a particular type of service. Since we are now in the era of Library 2.0, we need to meet our customers' basic expectation to have access to every product. Again how much have we accomplished? The program of 23things is a good start. To help our users with their needs and problems, we need to learn and be trained ourselves first.

Basic Concept 1: Web 2.0

I have heard quite a lot a bout Web 2.0. To be honest, I was very fuzzy about its basic concept until recently. To go down to the basics, I went to Tim O'Reilly's site and obtained a list of side-by-side comparisons between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. As it was published on 9/30/2005, some products and services might be long gone, or augmented or even replaced by newer crops.

Web 2.0 found itself popular overnight following the first O'Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004. According to Tim O'Reilly, "Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform." Wikipedia puts it more simply, "Web 2.0 refers to a perceived second generation of web-based communities, and hosted services — such as social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies — which aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users."

In my humble opinion, Web 1.0 opened up to the whole world the potentials of Internet, whereas Web 2.0 spread the democracy of Internet to the four corners of the world. Everyone can not only observe, but more importantly s/he can all play, write, create and share/publish in their own loosely- or closely-knit communities in the form of blogs, myspace and facebook. So the revolution is not limited to business, but to all walks of life, as long as one is willing to plunge in.

So what kind of impact does Web 2.0 exert on libraries and library collections? Rick Anderson has summerized most eloquently, we need to prepare 1) the 'just in case; collection, for our patrons will expect access to everything, print, nonprint and digital; 2) Reliance on user education, so our patrons can spend less frustrating time on learning new technological gadgets, but more on actual reading and learning. Such one-button command as 'Blog this' seems to be a promising model; and 3) transforming the 'come to us' model of library service into a new model placing library service and content in our patrons' preferred environment Web, or into their patterns of work, study and play. How much have we done?

Cover Art in Online Image Generator & Librarything

I really have had fun with the easy manipulation of cover art in the exercises for Online Image Generator & Librarything.

http://plcmclearning.blogspot.com/2006/09/10-play-around-with-image-generators.html is a very useful site in deciding and designing your own book covers. I especially love the option for CHANGE THE COVER!, which allows you to view and change your design accordingly in real time. Please look at my newly designed cover.

I am equally fascinated with Librarything's menu for ADD BOOKS. I duly added to its list Davenport Cement Centennial, a book by Alverda Orlando. There are two ways to add a book: manually and import. The title entry is instantly available for retrieval; however, there is a time lag for indexing the author list. I am not so sure of the exact time frame. It seems that overnight is to be expected.

The cataloging template is a simplified version of MARC (MAchine-Readable Cataloging). But its TAGS, COMMENTS and RATING are user-interactive. The same is true of REVIEW or REVIEW URL and RATING. This is something for catalogers to reconsider for their future templates and fields.

Librarything will provide a default cover for you if you do not have anything ready at the moment. You can always edit and add the cover later. It is gratifying to see the real cover on the screen, and the process is so easy and friendly. Please check out my sample at: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/hui-lan

RSS in Google's Blog & Bloglines: Camry & Cadillac

Thanks to Jessica Goodman's generous and tireless help, I have managed to add a number of RSS feeds in both Google's Blog and Bloglines. I have to admit that I like both accounts. The only difference they have is like the difference between Camry and Cadillac. While both luxurious in their interiors, the former is very economic with gas mileage, whereas the latter, drinks a little more gas.

I found RSS in Google's blog more graphic-orientated, built with blocks, i.e., page elements. The end-display can be at once concise, and informative if you configure all three options (items, item dates and item sources/authors). You can move those RSS feeds any place you desire on the screen, just like a nimble Camry.

Bloglines' RSS, on the other hand, is more roomy, with a big screen dedicated to it. It is also easier to ADD, DELETE and many other options, just as Cadillacs pamper their drivers with abundant luxuries.

With so many options available, I very much like to consolidate my blogs and RSS feeds in one place, instead of writing and reading in many places, such as Google's Blog, Bloglines, my home and officer Firefox Toolbar Folders. A blog link seems to be one solution; but a window reflecting each other's content and updates would be more ideal.

On Free Flickr Account

I have been experimenting with Flickr for a couple of weeks now. While fascinated with its flexible and friendly display features, I have noticed a few limitations in this application, especially when you have a free account: 1) You are limited to only 3 sets per account; 2) Your photos are all set to PUBLIC by default, unless you change the setting; 3) Your photos are accepted in .jpg format only; and 4) You have to know where you are when modifying and changing your sets. Online HELP is very limited, which includes its Upload interface.

I am very curious about other users' feedback. Constructive suggestions and advice are welcome.

Mosaics: Stepping Stones

The art of mosaics, or rather pique assiette, has been popular in this area for quite a few years. With friends, I went to a series of workshops in Scotts Valley. The following photographs have captured my progress thus far. Weather permits, my husband Paul and I are going to make more stepping stones, as there are so many plates stored in our side yard.

Knitting: Afghans

The AFGHANS Flickr site contains my knitting projects since 2004. It was inspired by my niece Stephanie who asked my sister and me to knit a blue sweater for her bear during our last visit to Westchester County, New York.

Most of those illustrated afghans have become good companions to my friends, families, nieces, nephews and newborn babies.

Click http://www.flickr.com/photos/titangos/sets/72157600384978695/
and leave a comment for my future creative projects, please. Thank you!