Podcasting

After a long break I'm up to podcasting, I think. Actually a couple of knitting podcasts have been my walking "music" for a year or so, but I never thought about adding them to Bloglines--a much easier way to know when there are new ones to download than constantly checking each site.

As for directories--podcast alley listed quite a few knitting podcasts I didn't know about. Nice too that they included a blurb about the podcast and a direct link to the podcast site. Podcast directory only listed one podcast under knitting so it wasn't the best choice for that subject. On the other hand when I looked for books on the podcast directory, there were quite a few choices, some also with annotations. Which directory is better obviously depends on what your interest is. I've also found some good lists by just googling a subject and podcasts. If I run out of knitters to listen to (not in the near future now that I have that long list from podcast alley!) NPR had some great music choices to sample.

To tweet or not to tweet

I can honestly say that in the months I've had a Twitter account, none of the people I "follow" have had anything earth-shattering to report. (Yes, people do really tweet about what they ate for breakfast!) Sometimes the character limitations make them so cryptic that they are devoid of meaning to most everyone except their inside circle, and much of the info. that is understandable isn't all that useful to the rest of us anyway. I follow some of the same folks whose blogs I read and find the blog posts much more interesting and helpful.

So, in typical twitter style--Week 9, step 10. Done.

Facebook, Week 8, Step 9

Played around with the privacy settings, making friend/family lists, etc. on my existing account. I'm not entirely satisfied with how the process works--seems cumbersome and a bit confusing to me. I'm sure the games and various quizzes, apps, etc. are fun and probably quite addictive, but...I'd rather knit!

Here a Blog, There a Blog (Week 7, Step 8)

So, is Feedster really dead this time? I couldn't find any mention of it since 2007 when rumors of its demise were abundant nor could I get the link to work.

Technorati looked good based on the tutorial (yes, I did realize I had to make Hans speak English, sort of) but I couldn't access his nice screen for searching for blogs instead of blog posts on a subject (I found 79,546 hits for knitting and although we are a prolific group, I doubt that there are THAT many individual knitting blogs out there.) Do I have to join to see the blog search page? And what if I don't want my blog listed? Technorati is often mentioned by tech gurus, so I guess I need to do more research to figure out what the buzz is about.

I found the search on bloglines much easier to use and the results more satisfactory; For my subject though, there are so many knitting blogs around (and not all of them that great) that I had better success seeing what blogs my favorite bloggers followed and checking them out. Maybe if I were looking for something less popular...

Confessions of an RSS addict

Yes indeed, 53 feeds and counting (but I've been adding these over a period of years so I'm not quite as addicted as it may seem!) Some are library-related, lots are knitting blogs (are you surprised?) and there are a few other odd ones (NPR) but I had forgotten I could add my podcasts to the same feeder. How convenient is that!!

Should you care--one of my favorite library feeds is Stephen's Lighthouse from the always mind-boggling Stephen Abram. http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/

And for all you knitters out there, Anne Hanson always has great designs, beautiful pictures of her creations and she's a wildly successful gardener too! http://knitspot.com/

Wiki fun

I must admit, the HPL wiki is more fun than work should be! It can be a real time killer though. Does that mean it's time to move on to the next step?

Wikis--for good and evil

From a reference stand-point I'm of two minds about wikis. On the one (good) hand I have found really useful information on wikipedia, for example, even for students who aren't allowed to use this as a resource. It's a great jumping off point when you have no knowledge of a subject. And since we can't all know everything, it's beyond helpful that someone who is truly an expert on some esoteric subject can easily share that knowledge with others.

On the other (bad) side, I understand teachers' decisions not to allow wikis as legitimate research resources just because ANYONE can post ANYTHING that may or may not be accurate. It's the same reason teachers were initally reluctant to allow web usage at all--no guarantee of reviewed, reliable, juried information, and often no authorship declared. Of course on a wiki inaccurate info. can be quickly corrected by anyone who spots it, but how do you know where you've enetered the process--when the bad info. is there or after it is corrected?

I can see a wiki as an option for sharing book reviews as these are known opinion pieces anyway, but what about as a resource for purely factual information? Can I depend on the community wiki to list an event with the correct time and date, or to be timely in the case of a change? What's to stop a prankster from seeing how many people he can assemble for a non-event? Hmmm...

Ok, enough biblio-babble--or wiki-babble for now, but this is an issue close to the heart of reference librarians so we bat it around a lot! And I'll bet it's more than you bargained for in Week 4, Step 5!