Tableless CSS

One of the newer emerging web technologies is the use of CSS to separate design from content on websites so in the spirit of adopting newer technologies, I converted a webpage to tableless. It was a long arduous process that involved manual coding with notepad, no Frontpage or Dreamweaver to help out. But thanks to sites such as A List Apart, I was able to simply edit existing templates. So check out my tableless webpage at Reading Suggestions.

Drowning in a sea of Web 2.0 sites

The number of Web 2.0 websites seems endless. After just signing up on Facebook, I learn about 3 more new social websites: Hulu, StumbleUpon, Pandora, and get reminded of a few that I forgot all about Digg and Lastfm. Many of these sites I have set up accounts and forgot all about them. Some like Picasa and Delicious I find quite useful for building better websites. In particular, Picasa has a handy slideshow feature for integrating cool slideshows in your website without having to learn any complicated code. Facebook is useful that it imports many of my Web 2.0 accounts into one place, the downside is that users have to sign up for a Facebook account to view my imported Web 2.0 profile.

More about Web 2.0

Besides the social interactivity of Web 2.0 websites, it is also a web graphic design revolution. In the mid to early 2000s the hottest websites had a lot of flash animation and super small tiny text. The emphasis was on graphics rather than content. It resulted in hard to read and hard to navigate sites. Usability was sacrificed for cool looking design. Web 2.0 design is a return to larger text and more obvious navigation, along with a lot of shiny, bold, and colorful graphics.

Check out Web Design from Scratch for an explanation of Web 2.0 design and Web 2.0 Generators for easy graphics for non-Photoshop experts.

Library Catalogs 2.0

First, let's define the whole Web 2.0 term. "SOFTWARE WHICH ENABLES MASS PARTICIPATION IN SOCIAL ACTIVITIES" is a term I lifted from Eli Edward's presentation which I'm sure she lifted from somewhere else. Basically, it's a website or web-based software that allows you to interact with people. Prior to that were static web pages, and one couldn't comment or interact with the content. Nowadays, there's blogs and wikis where you can comment - sort of like a giant message board.

The Library world has been quick to promote Web 2.0 and one of the results is an interactive Library Catalog where patrons can rate books, leave reviews, and make comments to make it more Amazon-like, which is the epitome of catalog 2.0. Some products our library has looked at were LibraryThing, BiblioCommons, and Chilifresh. They all required subscription fees, but the main roadblock to implementation was concern of spam, inappropriate reviews, and lack of staff time to moderate. A new social OPAC product is the "free" Sopac 2.0, recently implemented at Darien Library. It will be interesting to see how well this product is developed and if our management decides to take the plunge into opening our catalog up for public interactivity.

California Library Association CLA conference Nov 2008

Web 2.0 Workshops
Infopeople posted all their handouts at http://infopeople.org/cla/2008 where there were handy mini-lectures on CSS web design, Jing, Flickr vs. Picasa and how to create an avatar. There were a few new websites I wasn't aware of. One workshop introduced a new term to me called Microblogging - a fancy term for sites like twitter, jaiku, plurk, pownce, present.ly, yammer which are short one line blog sites that tell people where you are and what you're up to. It could be handy for an in/out board type service. There was discussion of blogs and wikis. One free online wiki site is wetpaint.com. I also went to a workshop on virtual reference for libraries using instant messaging sites like meebo, qwidget, plugoo. There was dicussion of the paid reference sites like Live Person and Tutor.com. There was also the SecondLife site which really is more useful to academic libraries rather than public libraries.


Free Audiobooks
I went to a workshop that discussed how libraries could implement low budget audiobooks as there are a number of free audiobook sites but the selection is limited to mainly classics which are public domain material and sound quality may not be good. Project Gutenberg has the best index of the free audiobooks. I went to a podcasting class by San Diego County Public Library and the best recorder for podcasting was the Samson H4 Zoom portable recorder.

Privacy

I attended several workshops about privacy concerns, one by Eli Edwards about Privacy Concerns of Social Networking where she brought up interesting controversies liked the Linked In site which is like a Myspace for business people where the site tells you and your business contacts if you've changed jobs, who has looked you up, etc. She also mentioned how teenagers are less concerned with privacy yet are shocked when their parents, teachers, employeers look up their info on MySpace. She talked about how Facebook had partnered with Beacon and for a time was tracking people's online shopping habits with cookies and notifying their Facebook friends what they had been looking at online. People couldn't turn off the notifications and had to send in signed written letter to cancel their Facebook accounts.

Patron Data

Another privacy workshop I went to dealt with the privacy of patron information and how San Francisco Public Library went through a long audit process and adopted a privacy policy. They brought up some interesting points on how long a library should retain patron data and the privacy of Internet search history. They pointed out how Google was able to predict a flu outbreak faster than the CDC based on search activity.

Master Speakers

Attended 3 master speakers sessions and the most interesting and informative was by Daniel Pink author of Johnny Bunko and A Whole New Mind. He discussed the reasons why jobs were being outsourced and succintly attributed it to 3 A's: Asia, Automation, and Abundance. He went on to predict that the jobs of future would involve Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, and Meaning. The other 2 speaker sessions included the husband & wife writer team Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman who were entertaining but not really teaching anything. The 3rd speaker I saw was actress Adrienne Barbeau who again was entertaining but I didn't learn anything new other than her life story.